


Dead Aim Alchemist [REWRITTEN] - For the People

by elena_stidham



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Investigations, Murder, Murder Mystery, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Writing Exercise, evolution of writing, improvement, writing development
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:44:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elena_stidham/pseuds/elena_stidham
Summary: THIS IS A TEST AND I WOULD LIKE YOUR HELP.This isn't a full-length fic or anything like it originally was meant to be. I had written this fanfiction two years ago on fanfiction.net called "Dead Aim Alchemist" and I ended up discontinuing it because of a lack of feedback and overall interest. However, it had been quite some time since I wrote it, so I decided to rewrite a chapter to show how far my writing has progressed. So, the purpose of this is to show how my writing has developed and evolved over the years. All comments, criticisms, etc. to compare the before and after are more than welcome!





	1. IMPORTANT NOTICE BEFORE YOU READ

**IMPORTANT NOTICE BEFORE YOU READ**

 

In case you haven't read the summary, this is an exercise/test to show how my writing has improved and evolved over time and I would like your help in judging the comparisons. I will be posting the original chapter and then the rewritten chapter in this document to show my progression and I want you to tell me how you think I can continue to improve or if there was actually anything I did worse on overall. Even if you don't want to leave constructive criticism, I do want to hear your opinions! Should I pick this fic back up on here? Did this inspire you by showing you that improvement is  _very_ real and possible? Let me know! I just want to hear from you guys about this. It's important to me. 

 

**ABOUT THE PLOT**

 

This is from a fanfiction I had originally done two years ago on fanfiction.net (this particular chapter is a year and a few months old) called Dead Aim Alchemist. It takes place after Brotherhood through the POV of Edward's daughter, Isabelle, and son, Marcus. Long story short, Edward and Alphonse were taken by this group that wanted to use them to start a war against Amestris and Isabelle -- the Dead Aim Alchemist -- is trying to find them and put a stop to it all. This particular chapter you don't need to know much about the general plot (since it's mostly its own story line), but I thought it would be important to mention. Other plot points you'll see in the original come from previous chapters where Isabelle becomes a State Alchemist and I try to parallel it to the time period it took place in. 

Long story short, the fic sucked. 

Or at least, I thought it did. I wasn't getting any feedback on it and after I dropped the fic I never looked back. I moved on to Yuri on Ice and other little original works, but it's always wonderful to see how much I evolved and where I came from. 

But, if you're in the mood to cringe despite how bad the original chapter was, you can read the full fic (or what I wrote before I gave up) [here!](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11807188/1/Dead-Aim-Alchemist)


	2. ORIGINAL VERSION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the original version of "For the People" from FanFiction.net. Be warned, it's kind of awful and really long. I kept the original chapter notes in the beginning and the end, just so you can have a feel for what I was going for, too. This was originally posted in June of 2015.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR: Language, alcohol use, violence, sexual themes, death
> 
> Yes, I did change my username from theterriblefate to thebaehood – I did this to everything I could so that all my platforms were consistent with one another so it would be synced up with my YouTube channel (The Baehood). Quick note to all my phandom (Dan and  
> Phil fans) members out there! If you want a break from this all serious story, I'd suggest you check out my phanfic "Bond" that I started. It's going to be fluffy stuff, so if that's what you're into, then go for it! Another thing, I mention ASMR in this fic, and while it may have been something that's only gotten recently popular, the whole fact of being lulled to sleep by sound triggers has been around for a while. The earliest source I could find was from the early 20s, and even then the idea of a mother singing her child to sleep has been around for ages. So I don't want any of you all complaining to me about how I'm not historically accurate – I do my homework. I just couldn't find another name to refer to this phenomenon, so what you see is basically what you get. But anyway! I finished! So, thank you guys so much for reading! I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> -Elena

It was just her luck that Isabelle became a member of the Investigations Department just when they were stuck trying to solve a case that lead to nothing but cold trails. They were on the hunt for a murderer that targeted young men in their twenties and thirties.

They had no connections with anything else.

They did, however, all have a similar style as to how they were murdered. It was clear blades were used in the process, and that was all. There was no stabbings, no gun wounds, no other methods of torture used; just cuts and carves and slices all around their bodies as if their murderer was having fun with its victim's agony. It wasn't until recently when the killer's calling card was discovered: on the back of the victim's neck there would always be a smiley face, sliced into the flesh so delicately as if each one was its own work of art.

Because of this, the murderer had be named "The Smiley Face Killer."

Isabelle was scared – knowing that Marcus falls under the victim category made her extremely cautious whenever they were out in the open together. She had become so overprotective of him, just as the General was starting to become with her. She couldn't handle the thought of losing her brother to some psycho. Marcus didn't mind her game of twenty questions when he wanted to do something as mundane as go to an automail shop or to a bar. Recently, he had found one that was rather well hidden, and its target audience was others that shared his sexuality, so that they have a peaceful gathering place without having to worry about being caught and arrested by the military police. In fact, the military didn't know that this bar even existed in the first place. He understood why his sister was so concerned about his every movements, and so he played along just to humour her until they were certain this killer was caught.

The General made sure that Isabelle would always arrive and leave with him, so that way he knew she wasn't going to overwork herself and so that he knew where she was at all times. Since he was now her superior officer, she really couldn't argue with a direct order, even if she hated it with every centimetre of her being.

Which, wasn't a lot of centimetres.

It relieved Isabelle to know that she now had access to all sorts of private information she wouldn't have otherwise known in order to find her family. She didn't think about it at the time, but when she looked back on it, she found it rather ironic that her father joined the military to help him find leads so that he could get a Philosopher's Stone and return his and his brother's bodies back to normal, and now his daughter joined the military to help her find leads so that she could find Edward and Alphonse. With permission, she became in charge of the Elric Case, anything and everything that had to do with finding her family was given to her in a little file that only had empty leads. She was afraid the Elric Case would become cold, or that she would find them when it was too late. She wouldn't find out until much later.

It was the beginning of March in 1940, nearing Marcus's twentieth birthday and marking the start of a new age with the Mustang family; it was a change they won't know about until just a little later. Isabelle, however, had yet to hit puberty – no periods, no breasts, nothing of the sort yet. It was kind of a stun to the Lieutenant, recalling one of the first times she visited the Elrics as Marcus's voice was changing rather early; so she had expected a similar swiftness to his sister, since girls are much quicker to begin with. And yet, the Elric daughter found herself to be a late bloomer.

Isabelle didn't mind not seeing any changes to her body yet, and she preferred it to remain that way, in all honesty. She hated the idea of having to take special care of herself every month all because she disagreed with her body wanting a baby.

In time.

Because of the recent addition to the military, the Lieutenant could now attend her duties without being dismissed by the General so that she could take care of the Elric children. Normally, Marcus would meet his sister home after his apprenticeship, but due to recent circumstances, he also had to stay at the headquarters until he could leave with his sister and the Mustangs. Marcus was legal, sure, but even then his sister suddenly had more authority over him due to her position (albeit, not that high of a position) in the military, and she wasn't afraid to take full advantage of it.

"Well, then what the hell am I supposed to do until you guys are done?" Marcus had asked the first time he found out he was ordered not to leave until he was dismissed.

"I dunno, maybe,  _read_?" Isabelle had snapped in response, taking a slight jab at how he chose to be a "grease monkey" as she called him rather than a bookworm. "Now, I don't mean to be rude, but could you leave me alone? I'm trying to work on this case."

Everybody in Investigations was trying to find the identity of the Smiley Face Killer. It was one of their more serious cases, and every idea that Isabelle seemed to have in regards to another connection with the victims lead to nothing but shaking heads and one victim that wasn't like the others. It was infuriating.

That is, until the killer got sloppy.

It was another male, in his twenties, just as the rest, with the same smiley face on the back of his neck, but this time, Isabelle noticed something new on the body. The blood wasn't uncommon on all of the victims, but there seemed to be more that flushed a deeper red in-between the victim's legs, similar to the way a girl would stain her clothes on her period. Upon closer inspection, Isabelle, along with the rest of the Investigations Department, found that the genitals had been removed. To be specific, they looked as though they had been twisted off.

"Check the other victims," demanded Lieutenant Colonel Russell Fletcher, the Head of Investigations, his voice muffled by the dust mask everybody had to wear at crime scenes. "We may be able to find a lead if they all have this same injury. Except you, Elric. You're staying here with me."

The General had made things very clear to the Lieutenant Colonel about having Isabelle in his department. He didn't give him any specific orders about her or anything, but he did suggest to use her in cases as an absolute last resort, and he did give him a warning: "if anything bad happens to her because of you, I'll make sure you feel every flame."

Ever since then, any lingering thought of sending her to do any dirty work had been swiftly yanked from his mind. Isabelle was pretty sure why the Lieutenant Colonel was so protective of her, but she didn't say anything about it, as she was grateful enough to have even earned her position in the military.

She didn't know why they chose "Dead Aim" for her out of all things, since her aim with weapons were actually quite terrible (apart from that gunshot that killed the shapeshifting chimera, but she couldn't think clearly to focus on her aim, making her believe she only has decent aim while hyped up with adrenaline). She thought for a while, and couldn't come up with any conclusions as to why she had been given that name. It wasn't until she asked the General when he finally was able to put rest to her thoughts that buzzed with confusion.

"You don't fire a warning shot," he had told her, "you just aim to kill them, whether you make the shot or not. It's like that old saying of 'shoot first and ask questions later,' it applies to you."

It won't be until later that "Dead Aim" will have two meanings to it.

"What do you think the connection would be if they all did have this same injury, Lieutenant Colonel?" Isabelle asked him while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.

"It could mean a number of different things, it all just depends on what else we can find about each of the victims," he thought out loud, loud enough for her to hear what he was thinking. And he was absolutely right. "Say, Dead Aim, the General told me you won't be coming on Wednesday. Why is that?"

"That's the twentieth, right? Marcus, my older brother, that's his birthday," she replied simply. She had already found time to buy his gift, which she had spent quite some time saving money for it. But she knew he had been wanting it for a while – the way he'd always pause when he'd pass it by in the windows and the way he'd fiddle around, wanting to feel it there. It was pricey, she had to admit, but she was thankful that she bought it in time.

"Really? How old's he turning?" the Lieutenant Colonel asked, with no real particular interest, but he did want to make small talk to get to know her, so that way there wasn't an uncomfortable sense in the air from being next to a corpse.

"Twenty, sir," Isabelle said. She didn't necessarily like discussing personal matters with her colleagues at the military – she didn't really like talking at all – but she did it out of respect and for the sake of learning to tame that damn Resembool accent. She had gotten much better at hiding it, most wouldn't have been able to guess that she was from the south side, much less cattle country, but there was that occasional slip up that everybody pretended to ignore. They also didn't have the heart to tell her that she would still have a twang on her "a," "i," and "y" sounds, which was something she wouldn't ever be able to shake off.

"Tell him my regards," he told her, and she nodded. She heard a car stop behind her; turning her head, she saw that the paramedics had arrived. She watched as they covered the corpse with a shroud, carefully scooped up the body, and carried it into the back of the vehicle.

As they carried it to the back, one of the men gently bumped into Isabelle, making her lose her balance for a moment.

"Sorry, doll," he said. This man's looks were charming, his voice smooth and suave, and his mannerisms deemed him to be practically irresistible, almost snake-like. He smiled warmly at the girl.

Isabelle was mesmerised by this man with burgundy hair and flawless features, too entranced by his voice to even respond, until she had to practically shake herself out of her temporary hypnosis to wave it off. The men resumed carrying the body, and the girl watched as she saw a small picture slip from the victim's corpse, gently floating to the ground and leaking into the puddle of blood it had left behind. She adjusted her latex gloves, and bent down, careful not to let her knees touch the ground. She could feel the heat from her breath bounce off the dust mask and gently caress her lips, a feeling she would be haunted by in years to come. She took a pair of tweezers and gently pried the photograph from the puddle of blood, turning to face the Lieutenant Colonel, "I need a bag."

He dug through a kit he had off to the side, opening a plastic bag for her; she set the photo inside of the bag and sealed it shut, handing him the tweezers and examined the picture closely. It was of the victim and a young woman who looked around his age, both merry and joyful while sat together at a dining table.

"Is that his girlfriend, do you think?" Fletcher asked her, peeking over her shoulder to look at the contents of the photo, and she shook her head.

"No, that's his sister," Isabelle replied. They looked too much alike – now, that couldn't rule out the girlfriend possibility, but–

"–But look at how he's looking at her, he clearly loves her. What makes you think they're related, even though he's looking at her like that?"

She took a deep breath, watching closely to try to determine where she had seen that look before. It wasn't the look Edward would give to Winry when she would gently hum to herself as she peeled apples, it wasn't the look Alphonse would give to May when she wasn't looking. It had nothing to do with Thomas, either. Loving someone didn't have to necessarily be romantic. Besides, she wouldn't have known – she never had a boyfriend in her life. She didn't really have crushes or feel sexual attraction, either, but she pretended she did so that way she felt normal. Then she remembered, feeling a pang in her heart and a heaviness in her soul, she remembered where she had seen it. "Because," Isabelle swallowed hard, "because that's the look Marcus would give me."

* * *

"Another one?"

Isabelle nodded, and she watched as Marcus shift uncomfortably in his seat, trying to think about any connections. He had been dismissed from his apprenticeship, and he chose to go to the public library to sketch out new Automail designs. Isabelle learned the time of when he would be dismissed and requested to take her lunch breaks at that time so she could spend some time with her brother. He glanced up from his design and watched as she took a bite of a small sandwich she had packed for herself. "Was it Smiley Face?"

She nodded again, and as she spoke, she gently rubbed on the back of her neck, "he had the mark."

"Damn," he paused, doing a quick mental count in his head, "that's the fourth one this week so far. You'd think Investigations could find something, anything!"

"We are, but it's a slow progression," she sighed. Her arms stopped halfway through raising her sandwich to her mouth, and she lowered it back onto her plate, her appetite lost as she remembered the picture. "This one had a sister, Marcus."

He looked up at her again, this time lowering his pencil, sensing in her tone how close this one hit to home. He didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry," she let go of what little food she had left and shivered a little in her seat. She remembered the bright light on her birthday, the bright light that came through her door just as the sun fell. "I don't want to lose you."

"Oh, Izzy," Marcus said, his voice saddened, but oddly like his mother's. He pushed his chair out and stood, opening his arms, "Come here." She didn't say anything, except just run into the comfort of her big brother, resting her head against his chest, standing as tall as she could so she could place her ear as close as she could get to his heart.

And she could still hear it beating.

* * *

Marcus's twentieth birthday was the first celebration to take place since Isabelle's fourteenth (disregarding the New Year, which wasn't much of a celebration at all). Marcus was the first to wake up, earlier than his sister as usual, lumbering down the stairs to be greeted with the Lieutenant and the General both trying their hardest to muster up a dish that was edible.

He didn't say anything, but he grinned as he walked past the two huddled by the stove, reaching into the cabinet, grabbing his favourite chocolate cereal and pouring himself a bowl. He sat at the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room as he ate, watching them fumble around and argue about how much heat should go into the strip of sausage. "Mornin'," he said simply. They turned to face the source of the sound, and the General groaned when he saw that they weren't successful in their attempt at breakfast.

"Whatever happened to that cookbook you were using a while back?" Marcus asked.

"Hell if I know," Roy sighed, batting his eyes over towards the Lieutenant who shot a glare at him in response. Clearly, she was the last person that was involved with said cookbook, and that was the last of it.

"Well,  _sir,_ " Riza growled, cutting open the sausage to see if it was fully cooked. She went to continue her response, but her words got caught in her throat, as if she had been punched in the gut and all of the words had been yanked from her tongue. She trembled, holding her hand over her mouth and completely disregarding the food in front of her – if anything, it made her feel worse. She pushed past the General and dashed up the stairs to the bathroom by the master bedroom.

There was a pause, then Marcus chuckled, "just the thought of your cooking made her sick."

"Oh, ha, ha," the General gave him a look, his tone dripping with the most sincere form of sarcasm. His eyes drifted, looking toward the direction of where the Lieutenant went, trying to think as to why she could have been sick. His mind flooded with worry – she hadn't eaten anything bad, nor was she around anything she might have an allergy to, which left only one possibility: she caught a virus. "Is she going to be alright?"

"It's probably just a bug," Marcus shrugged, taking another scoop of cereal onto his spoon. "Don't worry about it, it happens all the time. She'll throw it up, then she'll be fine. Just watch."

In the meantime, Isabelle had woken up to the sound of the Lieutenant's nausea in the bathroom. Sluggishly, she rolled herself out of bed and shuffled towards the direction of the sound. She stopped at the doorway and knocked on it gently, "are you alright, ma'am?"

"This is definitely not a bug," the sick one moaned, holding her hair to one side so that nothing got in it while she vomited.

"Is it something you ate?"

"I haven't eaten anything yet, Izzy."

"Did you catch something?"

She shook her head, then felt something rise in her stomach. Immediately, she turned her head back to the toilet bowl and gagged.

"May I ask you something, ma'am? It's a bit vulgar," Isabelle had always been trying to watch her mouth around adults, since she did have an awful habit of saying the worst things at the worst times. But the difference is between her co-workers and the Lieutenant was simple: she was actually afraid of upsetting the Lieutenant. She respected her authorities, for the most part, but the Lieutenant always struck her as someone that shouldn't be pushed to her limits. The General was another one of those people, but she felt more comfortable acting like herself around him – like her father.

When the Lieutenant nodded, Isabelle paused. She inhaled sharply, then she spoke with her exhale, "Do you still have periods, ma'am?"

She nodded glancing at the alchemist with one eyebrow raised, almost asking her where she was getting at with the question. Before she had a chance to ask, the Elric spoke over her thoughts.

"When was the last time you slept with the General?"

"I sleep with him every night, Izzy. I have been since you guys came–"

"Not like that."

Silence rung throughout the small bathroom, and the Lieutenant thought for a moment. She knew what the younger girl was trying to say, and she didn't believe it. She was never able to have a child, and so the very thought of it shocked her, to say the least. "I'm not pregnant." She was adamant in her answer; she and the General have tried time and time again and it just never happened. The very thought was impossible.

"You don't know that. I'm just saying, I'd check if I were you." Isabelle said nothing more, then she turned on heel, walking down the steps to be greeted with a plate of burnt sausage and over easy eggs. She glanced at Marcus, wanting to ask if it was edible, but found that he hadn't eaten what she had at all.

His eyes met hers, and she saw that Look again – the one that she saw in the photograph. She quickly looked away back at her food and began to eat. "I have to admit," Isabelle confessed with a mouth that carried food stuffed to one side so she could speak. "For not having a cookbook to tell you what to do, this isn't too bad." She thought of her mother's cooking, from the extravagant apple pies to even the simple lamb chops that she would serve for dinner. It saddened her to know that she would never be able to eat something like that ever again, but it depressed her to remember why that she would never be able to even see Winry ever again.

She wanted to kill every last one of those people that were responsible for her murder. Those people that worked with the shapeshifting chimera – she was going to make them pay.

Isabelle turned back to face Marcus, remembering why she was able to sleep in in the first place, "happy birthday."

He chuckled, ruffling the hair that sat atop her head, watching it scribble itself around like a toddler with a colouring book, "thanks, Izzy."

"So," the General spoke with a fake cough to get their attention, "what was it that you guys would do on each other's birthdays?"

"Just pass out gifts and eat cake, really. If we wanted to do anythin' else, like go to the lake to swim or something, we did. Sometimes friends came over, sometimes not, it all depended on what we all wanted to do," Marcus told him. He knew that Thomas never really had large birthday parties, either. He did, however, always go to the Elrics' house after one in the afternoon to celebrate there for the rest of the day. He never explained why he didn't like to stay home while both of his parents were at the house together, but Marcus would find out eventually, on the times he'd visit and hear the adults spew nothing but hate toward each other. Birthdays were always so simple – about the only time they were over-the-top was on the fourteenth birthday, and nobody was turning fourteen anymore.

"On Mama and Papa's birthdays, we'd go to Xing," Isabelle added, "to spend it with Alphonse and May–"

Her sentence stopped short, her lips still parted, her eyes widening.

_May!_

After all this time, she never really thought of her aunt in that much detail. It was more of a passing thought, really, like a glance when one would walk around another, sometimes there was the double-take in recognition, other times it would slip through their eyes. Now, her mind just took a double-take, a double thought, sinking in the memory, knowing the existence of one more person in her life that she had completely forgotten to protect.

"Isabelle, what's wrong?" her brother looked at her, concern in his eyes.

"Marcus, May wasn't with us on my birthday," she spoke slowly, her voice shocked and her hands trembling. The General was watching them both intensely, worried about what they could be thinking.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He thought about what she said for a brief moment, then his face started to mimic hers, and his tongue forced the words that Isabelle couldn't say. "Was she taken, too? Is she dead, too?"

Tears welled in Isabelle's eyes, but they weren't from sadness. She smiled as the drops of water ran down her cheeks, "No, Marcus. That would have been all over the news, just like how we were for that whole week. Marcus! Do you know what that means?"

It all hit them so fast. It was probably the best news they had heard since Isabelle's birthday. He started to laugh, starting at small chuckles, his eyes filled with tears, rushing down the side of his face as he laughed. He leaned back in his chair, running his hands through his hair as his laughter grew with intensity and volume.

The happiest thought they could have had in months fluttered through their minds, connecting them both, and in that moment, their minds were the same. Isabelle leapt off her seat and tackled Marcus to the ground, holding him as tightly as she could, his arms clenching around his sister as the same thought ran through their mind over and over again. He didn't feel any pain from the fall, neither did she, their hearts so full they would have exploded – the only thing they felt was joy. Joy and relief.

The General watched, a warm smile on his face. All he wanted was to see these kids happy once again, to have something to drive their determination. All he wanted was a foundation for them to stand on their feet again, to give them a platform that wasn't dead air. And here it was: the foundation they needed.

_May's perfectly alive! May's perfectly fine!_

"Well," the General concluded, making his way to the steps to go tell the Lieutenant the wonderful news. He knew they only had one day off for this birthday, but he was sure to make it worth something. "Get dressed. We're going to Xing."

There was a hole where their hearts lied, and this alone had sewn something back into place, this alone repaired that broken framework that was only held together by each other. And there it was, the moment when life stopped taking things from them and decided to give them something back.

Just this once, everybody was happy.

Everybody was fine.

* * *

Nobody would have seen anybody so excited to get on a train before. While they boarded, Isabelle couldn't help but ask herself a question that has been nagging her since she first remembered her aunt.

_Why didn't she try to come to see us?_

She knew that May loved her and her brother, but it worried her to know that she didn't even make an attempt to at least call to see if they were alright. The whole damn country knew that the Elric children were taken in by the General, and it was a miracle that nobody had tried to raid the Estate yet to take the kids if they were wanted by this group so badly. Thankfully.

But it left her wondering, her aunt surely knew Isabelle's situation. Why hasn't she tried to contact her, or her brother for that matter? She knew May wasn't taken or killed either, as she had concluded earlier; so what was the reason? Did she just not care?

Either way, Isabelle didn't care if May didn't really love her – she just wanted to see someone,  _anyone,_  that was family. The General and the Lieutenant were family, too, but they weren't as close to the Elric children back then as they are now. May, however, may not have been related by blood either, but she was about to be married in; not to mention she was much closer to the Elrics.

Either way, she just wanted to see her aunt.

The train ride wasn't long, neither was the arrival to Xing nor the arrival to the Chang clan. What would be long, however, was the wait between the arrival and actually seeing May. The moment one of them (which, looking back Isabelle believed to have been the General) asked about May Chang, they were immediately bombarded at every angle with weapons drawn. Needless to say, everybody was prepared for an ambush on the seventeenth princess.

Isabelle and the rest didn't know what to do at this point, so they slowly raised their arms in a surrender, but the weapons weren't lowered. Her eyes scanned around each individual, recognising a couple of the faces as guards from the palace, but they seemed to be in disguise. It made her wonder.

"What's your business with Princess Chang?" one of them asked, stepping forward toward the General, a sword tip hovering over his Adam's apple. Everybody else was on the verge of counter-acting, but they were more afraid of the consequences than just a threat that could possibly remain empty if they cooperated.

"She's my aunt," Marcus interrupted, feeling Isabelle slowly reach her hand over to him and gently start to tap on his arm in a pattern they had learned together. Morse code.

_Marcus, shut the fuck up before you get us all killed._

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then the guard made his way toward the tall blonde and aimed his sword at him. "What is your name?"

"Marcus Elric, sir," the words on his teeth were seething, his eyes practically glaring a hole through him enough to intimidate him. It did, however, spark a recognition in him as he waved his hand downward as a gesture for everyone to lower their weapons, and so they did.

"Elric, you said?" He nodded. "Come with me."

Following the guard in silence was uncomfortable on its own, but it got even worse when they would receive lingering stares as they walked past the civilians. What the hell had to have happened to make them so prepared?

At the gates to the palace, they were guided in and taken directly not to May Chang, but to their emperor sitting on his throne, a bodyguard wearing an intimidating mask was hiding behind him. The emperor had a table placed in front of him with various papers on it, and he was studying it intently.

"Emperor Ling," the General said, watching the young man grin and stand from his throne, meeting the older man with a handshake. "It's been some time, but we weren't here for you."

"I know," Ling shrugged it off. Isabelle had met this man only once while she and her brother would visit Xing, but her memory of him was hazy. One thing was for sure, he definitely seemed a lot goofier back then than he does now. "Everybody that requested to see my little sister has to come here. Shortly after the Elrics were ambushed there was an attack on her clan. Thankfully, we got her out safely and I ordered her to go into hiding. Anybody that wants to see her has to be approved by me before they're escorted to her."

There became a relief among the people there, knowing that everything was fine and that she was alright. And to the kids, they were happy to know that she didn't stop loving them. Before the General could even respond or before the Lieutenant could make some comment under her breath, Isabelle's words trampled overtop both of them with ease, "So, she's alright?"

Ling glanced over behind the adults to see both Elric children, much more grown up than when he last saw them. He couldn't help but smile to himself and let out a soft chuckle through his nose, "Wow, did you two get old." He simply nodded at the girl to answer her question and redirected his attention to the General, where his smile quickly faded. "I'll take you all to go see her."

"My imperial majesty," the voice that spoke came from the guard in the mask behind the throne. It was a female's voice, for sure, albeit muffled, it sounded stern. It had that kind of sternness a mother would have when she would be afraid to let her child run outside and play after she had just bandaged them up for hurting themselves on the sticks and stones. "Do you really believe that it's wise to do that?"

"Lan Fan, you know these people. You know they are good people," he looked back towards her, almost offended by what she had said.

"I know, and you're correct in those statements," she took a few steps forward, stopping once she was practically behind the emperor again. "But I do recall seeing in the paper that the Elric daughter was recently attacked while she was performing her practical alchemy exam in order to join the military. These kids are still very much wanted by this group, and for all we know, they're probably being watched as we speak."

Isabelle shifted her attention around the room, not wanting to listen to adults bicker over things she found to be rather petty. Her eyes traced every corner of the room until she saw a paper that sat on the table in front of the throne. Five letters on the page caught her eyes, and her body began to walk without her brain processing what she was basically trespassing.

_Elric._

"Isabelle! Isabelle!" Marcus tried to shout for her in a hushed whisper, not wanting to take the adults' attention, but he didn't want her to get in trouble either. He couldn't see what his sister saw, as he couldn't see far away, but he knew it had to have had some importance to drag her toward the table without permission. The adults could hear him, anyway.

"You aren't the only one looking for your family."

Isabelle turned her head to find Ling right behind her, then she looked back at the papers that were scattered throughout the table.

"You guys don't have much to work with, either," she mumbled, her voice saddened and hopeless. At this point, she was genuinely starting to believe that she would never get to see her father or her uncle ever again.

Ling picked up on the girl's tone, and he gestured for the rest of the group to follow him as he walked past his throne, pulling back the curtains to reveal a stone wall. "Come on, I'll take you to go see May."

"I don't know what kind of magic you use," Marcus said, "but I can't walk through walls."

The emperor grinned, then he pushed on one of the centre stones, watching the wall shift backwards and to the side, revealing a small, narrow tunnel that was lit by lanterns whenever the distance would make the area too dark. He turned his head back to face the Elric boy, "What was it your father always said? 'If you can't find a door, make your own?'"

They followed him down the path, making careful sure to follow him closely and carefully, as there had been many times where the paths would diverge into multiple sections, some of them were even rigged up with traps. Time felt slow, especially to the Elric children, waiting for the time they can finally see their aunt was one of the longest waits of their lives. Isabelle clutched onto her locket tightly, reminding herself not to look at the photos, since she was about to go to the real thing.

Finally, Ling stopped at a door, then he knocked gently. A top section of the door slid open and eyes peeked through the hole. The person that spoke behind it had a voice that made it difficult to distinguish gender, age, or even nationality; but one thing was certain about this voice was that they meant business. "Emperor Ling? Who are these people?"

"May's relatives and their legal guardians."

The section slid back into place, covering the hole up and there became odd sounds from behind the door. Many of which were clinks and various tapping sounds. A couple of those tapping sounds sent tingles down Isabelle's spine, and it seemed her brother had felt the same way, as he shivered just slightly. By this point, she was aware that her brother was the one taking her from that branch in a tree outside back into her bedroom at the General's Estate, but she still wasn't aware of the sounds he'd make that would trigger her into a sleepy, trance-like state. It wouldn't be until she read a new book on alkahestry in her old age when she'd discover why these sounds were intoxicating to her. The book had referred to it as an  
"Auditory-tactile synaesthesia," but another source had called it "Autonomous sensory meridian response," or ASMR for short.

The door opened, and it seemed that this area was a whole other wing of the castle that May had all to herself, and it made her wonder if Ling sealed off this part of the palace just so that he could hide his little sister with peace. If Isabelle had thought about it, she might have had Marcus stay there until the Smiley Face Killer was caught.

Ling guided them in, blowing out the torch and hanging it on the wall, and he called out for the princess. "May," he yelled out, and said nothing more, wanting it to be a surprise that her family had come. There was silence, and then he tried once more, "May!"

"What is it, Ling?" May's voice grew gradually louder as they heard her walk down a hallway to the direction of where she was called. She made her way into the open area, braiding a section of her hair, expecting only the two people that would normally come. Instead, she saw the children first.

It happened all at once, and all so fast. The princess had dropped her hair from her hands and sprinted to the Elrics, and they ran at her too, all three of them calling for each other and screaming with joy. Isabelle was the first one to collide with May, holding her as firmly as possible, the daughter being only a head shorter than the princess. May held both arms around the girl until Marcus had collided with the two girls, where May took one hand off Isabelle's back and wrapped it around the back of Marcus's neck. He had to bend over to hug her, too, but it didn't matter; in a matter of seconds they were a pile of bodies kneeling on the floor and holding each other so tightly – almost as if one of them would float away if they didn't hold them this way.

There wasn't much discussion at first, other than the "I love you"s, "I miss you"s and the "I was so worried about you"s. There was the occasional "I'm so happy that you're safe/okay/alright/not dead." One of them even said that they were afraid that they were never going to see the others again. Other than that, there was no other dialogue, just tightly held comfort, immense joy, and many, many shed tears.

Not much was done after they dried their eyes, mainly they all sat together and caught up on each other's lives after the incident on Isabelle's fourteenth. Nothing much had changed for May after she had been taken into hiding, and she told them the new daily routine that she had to learn to live with. She hated being cooped up in an area for longer than a few hours, much less a few months. For those moments, the family had almost completely forgotten about why they were even there in the first place, and the smiles on their faces almost seemed genuine.

"Now, Marcus, it's your twentieth, correct? Happy birthday," May asked him after a brief moment of silence. He nodded in response and said his thanks, which made her sit back and think for a moment. "I haven't been able to leave the palace since I came here, so I couldn't have gotten you a present. But, I'll make sure to have one of my guards go out and get you something."

He shook his head, "Don't worry about it. Seeing you was a present enough."

Isabelle's ears perked up, and she tapped on her brother's shoulder to get his attention. He looked over at her to see what she wanted, and she told him, "Remind me to give you your present that I got you when we get back to the Estate."

"I told you don't get me anything."

"And I told you I don't give a shit."

When it was dusk, the family had to part ways. Nobody wanted to go, nobody wanted to leave the other one behind, but they knew that they didn't have all the time in the world. If they did, they'd never leave.

"Promise me you'll write," May told the two, prompting an enthusiastic nod in return from each child. She hugged them one last time, before she pulled away and smiled sadly at the children, "please, promise me you'll be safe." There was a long pause before the two nodded again, with much less enthusiasm this time.

They knew they weren't safe.

* * *

It was a little bit past midnight when everybody returned to the Mustang Estate. They were exhausted, their movements lethargic and their bodies moved in a lazy, sluggish way, almost as if they were dragging themselves along the floor like zombies. Even Isabelle, the night owl herself, was starting to yawn.

Marcus started to force his legs to move up the steps to his room before his sister stopped him with a tug on his shirt, "Wait a second, before you go to sleep, I have to give you your present."

"Make it quick, please," he groaned as he plopped himself onto the couch and rested his head on his arm, using it as a kickstand.

As Isabelle ran upstairs to fetch for the gift, the General presented him with a small envelope, "it's from me, but it was the Lieutenant's idea."

When he opened the card, there wasn't much written inside except for the stereotypical happy birthday messages and the cheesy pun that was on the card itself. But, within the card, fell a ticket to his favourite automail shop. This ticket allowed him to buy whatever he wanted without having to fork over any cenz, since it said the supplies were for the military automail and signed by the General himself. It wasn't a complete lie, but it wasn't the complete truth either. It was yet another lukewarm statement, but it allowed him unlimited access to supplies at one of the most prestigious automail shops in Central. Marcus, needless to say, was beyond shocked and beyond grateful.

"Just don't tell them that you use it for personal projects, too," the General winked as he made his way upstairs, "happy birthday."

As the Mustangs made their way up the steps, Isabelle dashed down past them, a small box in her hands and her face beaming with excitement. She threw herself down onto the couch next to her brother and practically shoved the box in his face, "this is from me."

Marcus chuckled, unwrapping the tiny bow that held the box together and removed the lid. When he looked in, he saw a pair of stainless steel ear studs and a pair of stainless steel ear cuffs that came with the set, similar to what Winry wore. He had always wanted to wear earrings, and would often fiddle around with his earlobes, longing to feel something there, but he never had the time nor the money to go out and buy a pair and to get his ears pierced. He looked at his sister, his eyes wide, "this is the exact set I wanted too, how did you know I wanted this? This is incredible!"

"I saw you practically drool over this pair at this shop, so I saved up," Isabelle smiled, excited to see them on his ears. "You can get your ears pierced tomorrow after you're dismissed from your apprenticeship training, I already paid for you appointment."

He stared at them for a moment, smiling, then looked back at his sister and pet her head. He pulled her close to him and kissed her forehead, smiling at her with loving eyes, "Thanks, Izzy. I love them." He stood up, slowly making his way around the couch towards the steps.

"Hey, who knows? Maybe you can wear them to that secret special bar that you go to all the time to help impress a special someone there," she shrugged, sitting up and leaning on the back of the couch to talk to him, her arms folded on the top of the seats.

This prompted a small laugh out of her brother, and he looked back at her, seeing the innocence left in her eyes. "It's just a gay bar," he shook his head, trying to sugar-coat his words, "people mainly go there to drink without havin' to worry about acting straight and to have a good time. Sometimes, they go there to hook up with someone."

"Gross," Isabelle gagged slightly. "Why are people so into that? I don't get it. It's nothin' special and I never understood how people feel lust or sexual desire. I don't feel it."

"You know, there's a word for people like you, Izzy," he informed her nonchalantly. "They're asexual."

"Is there a word for people that don't feel romantic attraction either?" Now she was starting to get curious. She always thought she had been a freak for not feeling those things, but to think that she wasn't just an outcast…

"Aromantic," Marcus said. He thought for a moment, before he asked, "So you're an aromantic asexual?"

"I guess," Isabelle told him. "I mean, I want to settle down with someone and have kids, sure, but I don't want to have sex and I don't want to act all lovey-dovey with them like couples have to."

"Couples don't have to act lovey-dovey," he said. He almost sounded like an educator, and he most certainly knew what he was talking about. "Just marry your best friend and adopt some kids. That'll satisfy your needs."

Isabelle's heart fluttered, her eyes brightened and her smile grew, "That sounds perfect! I'm so glad I have a brother that accepts me for who I am. You're the best. Thank you, Marcus."

He smiled softly, and held up his box in the air for a brief moment before he began to walk up the steps, "no, Isabelle, thank you."

To this day, Isabelle still didn't know what that specific thank you was for.

* * *

"They found another one," the Lieutenant Colonel groaned as he hung up the phone, standing from his desk and looking at the rest of the individuals in the Investigations department, all sat at their little desks. "They found another body."

"Was it Smiley Face again?" Diana Payne, a detective in her mid-thirties, asked, already knowing the answer. He just nodded in defeat.

Before Isabelle could stand up to leave with everyone to go investigate, the door opened, and one of the other detectives stepped in. This one was that same boy from the practical exam, William Targensen. He was mainly used to go out and conduct interviews, as he was a smooth talker and he was easily able to shift one's emotions around just by his word choice and tone of voice. "Sir, I just finished talking to the last victim's sister, and she said the last place he went to was a bar, at least that's what he told her. Other relatives from other victims have mentioned a bar too, but not all of them. Some of them didn't know. I think this killer is targeting these men at bars during the night."

Isabelle's blood ran cold, remembering where her brother would go later in the evenings – a bar the military doesn't know about, even – made her wonder if he was going to be next. She didn't want to think about it.

"Then go to all the bars in town and ask around, see if they recognise any of the victims," Fletcher told him. "I'll let you know the details on this new victim after we investigate."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,  _another_  one?" William sighed. The Lieutenant Colonel only nodded, and then the newer detective turned and exited the door again, this time to isolate a location for the murder victims.

Only this time, when he came back with the report, none of the bartenders have reported seeing any of the victims, and that's when Isabelle knew.

"The Smiley Face Killer is targeting homosexuals."

Everyone in Investigations turned to face the young detective, curious about her explanation. She had to be careful not to mention her brother, or else they were fucked. She continued to elaborate, "These people were last seen at a bar, correct? But at all the bars here in Central, none have reported seeing any of the victims. That has to mean that either one of the bartenders were lying or that they went to a secret bar that none of us know about: A gay bar."

They all thought for a moment, and everything started to make sense. They were growing with excitement, knowing they were gaining on the Smiley Face Killer made them overjoyed that they might catch him. As for Isabelle, however, she was terrified.

The killer was one step closer to her brother.

* * *

That night, Isabelle went with her brother to this gay bar that the killer often resided, careful to hide her pocket watch and her pistol, holding the pictures of each victim in a pocket in her jacket. She wore that jacket everywhere as often as she could, the red one with the flamel she got for her birthday. It reminded her of Edward.

When they opened the door, they were immediately welcomed by the others there, especially by those that knew Marcus. "Who's that you got with you, Rudy?" they asked.

_Rudy?_  Isabelle asked by tapping on his arm in Morse code, switching between fingers in mid-tap so that it wouldn't be obvious there was a code. It would look like a worried habit if anyone were to see them.

His response was simple:  _everybody knows who Marcus and Isabelle Elric are. I'm playing it safe._

_Thank you,_ Isabelle tapped back.

"My little sister, Liesel," he said as he pulled her close to his side, careful to make sure she doesn't wander off. If anything, that's what she felt like doing to him. "Don't worry, she knows about me and she won't tell anyone. She just wanted to see what I do every night. She's a big worrywart, you know?"

Other men in the bar just laughed, nodding in agreement and holding their drinks in the air. "Why don't you and Liesel come and have a drink with us? Is she legal?"

"She's going to turn fifteen in October, so yes, she's legal," he just smiled oddly and nodded, guiding her to sit with him at the bar. Playing along with her innocent charade, Isabelle practically climbed onto the bar stool, leaning forward slightly and clutching onto the rung closest to her on the seat.

"Rudy mentioned that you were a worrywart? Why so frightened, dear?" the bartender asked as he placed two shot glasses in front of the two. Before Marcus could protest about the price shots would escalate to be, he was cut off by liquor being poured into each glass. "Don't worry, it's on the house."

With a quick nod of gratitude, Isabelle noticed that the Bartender's eyes were on her, anticipating an answer out of her. She swallowed, preparing to speak, then shook her head, looking at her brother desperately, knowing that he could hide something better than she could. She didn't even have to tap on his arm for him to just know.

_My accent!_

Now, the accent wasn't much of a problem in the workplace or in her social life like she had thought it would be. It did, however, interfere with her undercover work. If anyone were to know that she was from Resembool, it wasn't the end of the world, but it would it most certainly blow her cover if they realised she wasn't around here like she would try to come across being.

Marcus took his shot with ease, then he leaned forward towards the Bartender, his voice lowering, "It's those murders happening 'round here. Word on the street says the victims were last said to be at a bar, and it's making her wonder if it's this one."

The Bartender quickly glanced around the room as he wiped up a glass, eyeing each person suspiciously before leaning back toward the Elric boy, "The Smiley Face Killer?"

Isabelle immediately felt eyes on her.

Marcus nodded in response, ignoring his sister's desperate tapping on his arms. "Yeah, that one. I fall directly into his target audience." Shakily, the detective retreated her fingers, slowly turning her head behind her to see where the feeling was coming from, but couldn't find anybody. She turned back, then quickly downed her shot. She had never had any form of alcohol once in her life since she turned fourteen, much less whiskey. Immediately, she felt the drink burn down her oesophagus, setting fire in her stomach and turning her tongue into lava rocks. Her eyes watered, and it took everything in her to keep from coughing, much less to hold a straight face throughout the duration of her shot.

She'd learn to adapt to it.

"Damn, she takes it like a champ," one of the men commentated, gesturing to the girl. Their comments were easily ignored by the three at the bar.

The Bartender continued, "Where the hell did you hear they were last at bars? How would you even know that information?" He looked genuinely concerned by now, to think that his little safe haven for those who preferred the same sex was quickly becoming a gold mine for serial killer victims was overwhelming.

"I read it in the paper this morning," Marcus lied.

That's when the Bartender eyed him accusingly, his entire demeanour changing when they all quickly realised he called their bluff. "That wasn't in the paper this morning." He looked over at Isabelle, his eyes scanning her up and down a few times before asking, "You're name's not Liesel, is it?" She just stared at him. No words were spoken between the two until he asked once more, "Who are you, really?"

Dead Aim felt the room go quiet, all eyes on her now. She weighed her options, then she made the bold move, the one that would prove her point and get it across in their thick skulls. She reached into her pocket, pulled out her pocket watch and slammed it onto the counter, prompting various gasps of horror in the room.

There was a pause. She heard a man cry out, "she's military!" before standing and trying to make his way towards the door. The State Alchemist took the gun from her holster and aimed it at the man, stopping him in his tracks without her having to move an inch from her seat. She gestured her gun back to the direction to where he came from, and then kicked her head in the same direction just a few seconds after, her eyebrows raising slightly to tell him to go sit back down. Nervously, the man obeyed. She turned back to face the Bartender, resting her hand that held the gun on the counter, her other hand propped beneath her chin to have her fingers hold up the weight of her head, her eyes piercing a hole through him and the wall behind him. The room was still carrying a dead silence; still reeking of cigarette smoke and opened alcohol bottles, the tension that everybody felt was nerve-wracking until the alchemist seethed over her shoulder, "You may resume."

Slowly, they obeyed. And she waited, pausing before she spoke so that she knew there was a background noise to disperse their conversation among the clatter and other peoples' chatter. "Now, there's a few people I need you to identify."

The interview lasted about an hour and a half, and it went by faster than expected. When it was over, both Elric children found themselves walking down the entrance steps, the amber glow from streetlamps reflected on the blacktop, shimmering in puddles from where it had rained just a little bit before.

Nowadays, it was always raining.

They walked together in a heavy silence for the most part, their sights somewhere in-between the wet cobblestone ground and eye-level, watching as their breath formed silver swirls of mist in the air with every exhale that responded to every intake. Marcus slid his hands into his jacket pockets to retain some warmth, and also to practically hide his trembling, unsettled nerves. Isabelle's blood was as cold as the air outside of her, after the events of what happened in the bar made her petrified of her brother ever returning. And he wouldn't, but only for a short while.

The Bartender was able to identify each and every single one of the victims from the pictures she had shown. He even commented about how they had left with another man (which wasn't an uncommon occurrence at this place, apparently), whose face he was never able to catch; and how he watched as they were giggling along with their date for the night in a drunken haze. The last thing he told Isabelle was how he had watched the man would sweet talk the victims to his apartment for a promise of a good time that night, only for them to never be seen again, only once more in an obituary, all from being lured out the door.

"One more thing," the Bartender had informed the detective before the interview was wrapped up in an uncomfortable and unsettling thought.

"What is it?" Isabelle had asked.

There was a pause. The Bartender set the glass down onto a rag with the rest of the clean glasses, resting his elbows on the counter and looking the girl dead in the eyes, he said to her words she wished she didn't have to hear. "Your brother seems to be just his type. This guy is irresistible. He's charming, he's suave, and he'll tell you everything you want to hear to earn your trust. He'll do it with a big smile on his face, just like a snake."

* * *

In history, March 22nd – 30th became known as "The Week of Silence" in Amestrian textbooks. Many historians would point to Isabelle's diary as the source of the title. As she had mentioned in her diary, "Not one thing happened in those nine days. No murders, no robberies, not even a single speeding ticket. Honestly, I was appalled. The Investigations Department had to resort to various field trips and stupid team activities to keep ourselves entertained until it was time to check out and go home. We were all ready to go home. I never once mentioned the incident at the gay bar to any of the other detectives, as I was afraid of any of them arresting Marcus for being who he is. That's one thing I never understood was the absolute hatred these people have to the homosexuals – I never understood how they couldn't just see it for what it was: love." (Elric pg. 153).

In fact, it seemed that the only major events that happened would be when the Lieutenant would vomit almost every morning after breakfast.

On the 27th, Isabelle had told her brother her growing suspicions about the Smiley Face Killer. She was concerned why he suddenly stopped with his killing streak, trying to think of any possibility why he had halted on his murdering spree.

"He might have been at the bar the night and realised you were right on his trail, so he might have decided to lay low out of fear of being caught," Marcus suggested.

She thought of the idea. It was probable, sure, but then she remembered what the Bartender had told her a few days before.  _Your brother seems to be just his type._ She had specifically requested that he contacted her if her brother were to leave the bar with anyone, and it scared her to think that there wasn't a single attack since they had that interview.

"He might have targeted you personally," she said in a low voice. She fiddled around with her hair, undoing it from its braid and braiding it again as a nervous habit. "He might be waiting for you to come back."

"See, Izzy, this is how you can spot paranoia. You need to relax."

She couldn't. She had in fact learned to listen to her gut feelings, a little bit more carefully than her own brain.

A few days later, on March 30th, the Week of Silence came to an abrupt end the evening when Marcus decided to go back to that bar, thinking it would be safe by this point to return. He didn't want to tell his sister to avoid worrying her, but they both knew she would end up finding out about it anyway. Buttoning up his jacket, he walked from his room to his sisters, which was only next door. Her door was open, and when he peeked in, he found her reading the latter chapters of  _Mary Poppins_. He knocked on her doorframe.

Isabelle looked up, her eyes quickly skimming her brother and his outfit and she swallowed hard. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going back to that bar," Marcus said nonchalantly, trying to keep a cool mannerism so that he wouldn't worry her, but he knew it wouldn't last long. He knew she didn't like that answer at all, because she slammed her book shut without even bothering to bookmark it, shooting up off her bed and almost immediately in front of him.

"You can't."

To Marcus, those next few moments became a muffled blur, unable to remember anything that was said or anything that happened, but he did know that it got ugly. When he came to, he found his sister on the brink of tears in front of him, unable to speak and red marks on the area of her arms between the shoulder and the elbow, where he had held her there so tightly it left a firm imprint for a moment, only to dissipate away by the time he would see her again. He didn't remember what he said, but to this day he regrets it.

"Fine then," Isabelle said flatly, returning to her bed and sitting back down, not saying for a long time until a choked sob escaped her throat, along with the next words that she forced out. "If you truly think that way, go get yourself killed, then. I won't save you this time."

After that, he had a fairly decent idea about what he said. He didn't say anything in return, only walking down the stairs and leaving through the front door. He pretended not to hear her sounds of pain coming from the upstairs.

It was easier that way.

Back at the bar, he was welcomed back just as he usually was, and he sat at his usual spot in the back with the vast majority of the others at the little pub. The moment he started to talk with the others again, it felt like he never left at all, and it felt nice.

"Say, Rudy, when'd you get your ears pierced?" One of them asked, noticing that he was wearing his earrings that he got for his birthday, and he just shrugged in response, prompting laughter from the rest of the group. If anything, he was more surprised that they still thought his name was Rudy, even after they realised Isabelle was an undercover detective.

They talked on for a while, about various things – from the weather to their neighbours' dog, to even the most embarrassing moments in high school. That is, until one of them brought up the Smiley Face Killer. He couldn't go anywhere without hearing about him, couldn't he? He was sick of it.

"You remember that one chick that you brought with you, right Rudy? That undercover cop?" Another asked, sitting up straight and now leaning forward, connecting his knees to his elbows. Marcus nodded in response, so the man continued his question, "Do you still keep in touch with her?"

"She's my sister, so yes," he chucked, taking a drink that someone else had poured for him in a shot glass, watching as it was being refilled. His head was starting to spin just thinking about another shot of alcohol, but he ignored it anyway. "That part wasn't undercover. What about her?"

"Did she tell you anything new about Smiley Face, or are the papers correct in not publishing anything new?"

"Investigations hasn't found a thing," Marcus said, taking another shot, starting to feel the effects of all that liquor take hold on his body. "I guess she scared him into submission. She has a tendency to do that, after all." There was a pause, the only sounds remaining in the room were the clinking of glasses around him and a faint chuckle from where he laughed at his own joke. He took another shot, then he really started to feel dizzy.

"You look drunk as hell," said another man from behind him. When he turned his head, his eyes met a man with burgundy hair and a sweet smile on his face. "Would you like me to take you home? Lord knows you can't walk or drive around when you're drunk, much less on your own during this time."

He nodded and began to stand with a quick thanks. Looking back, Marcus knew that he should have stuck with his gut feeling and politely deny his request, but at the time, the whiskey was overpowering his brain, and all logic that came along with it. Thankfully, his friends around him stood up just as he did, all weary-eyed and suspicious of this new man that just showed up and wooed the drunk boy over. One of them spoke up, "How do we know that we can trust you with our boy here?"

"Don't worry, I know his sister. She sent me here to look after him in case he gets a bit too tipsy," the man with the burgundy hair waved them off, and the rest lowered their guard, practically entranced by his words, almost as if saying "hello" would cast a spell on them. Taking Marcus by the arm, they exited the bar, one of them to never return ever again.

The Burgundy Haired Man guided the drunk Elric into the passenger side of his car, buckling him in snugly, and then hopping into the driver's seat, glancing back to find the blond in the back drifting in and out of consciousness. He shut the door, starting up the vehicle and driving off to his place.

There was a moment where Marcus had processed that the way this man was going was definitely not in the same direction as the General's Estate. He looked at the Burgundy Haired Man, confused, and said to him, "Hey, you're going the wrong way."

The Burgundy Haired Man pulled over on the side, turning back to face Marcus. He smiled sweetly, then simply spoke, "I know." He then lunged towards the boy, his hands holding a firm grip around his neck, squeezing his throat tightly. It was right then did the Elric realise what was actually happening, and that who this Burgundy Haired Man actually was. Marcus tried to peel the fingers from around his neck, but to no avail, so he leaned forward, clawing at his attacker's face with his nails until he managed to cause a deep scratch just under his eye. The assaulter quickly retreated his hands to bring them up to his face, and that's when Marcus took his chance.

He unbuckled himself, snapping the car door open and rushing out into the rain as fast as he could, running away from the scene and trying not to slip and lose his balance because of the puddles. By this point, his adrenaline was overtaking his drunken state, nothing but instinct driving him as his thoughts only screamed two things:  _Survive. Isabelle. Survive. Isabelle._ Over and over these thoughts repeated in his head until he felt himself being tackled to the wet ground. He flailed his arms back, crying out for someone, anyone, to help him, but was swiftly cut off by his attacker's hand tangling his fingers in his hair, yanking his head up, only to slam it forehead first back to the cobblestone below. His vision went hazy, but he saw blood, almost as if the last string of hope resided in his iris to stay awake, to stay alive, but one more hit knocked the rest of his consciousness out of his skull. Blackness was all he saw left.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

* * *

It was three in the morning, and Isabelle had just fallen asleep, relatively early for once, too (at least, for her anyway). The phone in her bedroom rang her awake, and she groaned, dragging herself out of her bed and answering the phone with her usual greeting.

"Is this Isabelle Elric? That detective I spoke to not that long ago at my bar?" the voice on the other line was the Bartender's. It was hushed, hurried.

"It is," she replied. She heard him let out a sigh of relief, and she could almost hear him shaking on the other end of the phone. This alone helped wake her up, "What's going on?"

"I can't find your brother. When I asked around to see where he went, they told me that Rudy left with someone you sent."

Isabelle felt her blood run cold, knowing that she didn't send anyone, she dropped the phone, letting it dangle on the cord, her body stiff as a statue. She heard the Bartender attempt to speak to her through the phone, and all she could think about was how her brother was about to be another victim from this serial killer. Her mind raced, and then she forced herself to think this situation through. She dashed, putting on her jacket and some shoes, not even caring that she's still in her nightgown, and then took her pistol with her as she darted down the stairs and out the door. She didn't even bother being quiet. She was sure that she had awoken the General and the Lieutenant.

Her mind screamed for her brother, her legs running faster than she thought they could carry her. As she ran towards the bar, she quickly checked her clip before she slid it back into the gun.

Five bullets. She had five bullets left to kill this motherfucker.

But all she needed was one.

* * *

Marcus's vision faded in and out before he official woke up, bound to a metal chair and his mouth covered with duct tape. His legs were forcefully spread and bound on opposing chair legs, and since he knew what was happening with the bodies, he knew exactly why he was seated this way. He didn't know what was dangling on the chains around him, nor did he want to know what was hanging. He could faintly hear the whirring of an electrical saw, then it stopped. His head was practically splitting open from all the alcohol to begin with, but the adrenaline only hyped up his senses and made it that much worse of an experience for him. Truth be told, the boy was absolutely terrified.

In the distance, he saw his captor walking in his direction with a smile on his face, carrying various blades and tools that he knew was going to be used on him in just a few short moments. It was so hard to breathe with the duct tape over his mouth, and all he could think about was his sister. What would happen to her if she were to find his corpse? How would she react? Tears welled in his eyes, and he couldn't blink them away, feeling them trail down his face, running along over the tape that sealed his lips.

The Smiley Face Killer placed his instruments of torture on the table in front of him, making careful sure that Marcus could see each and every object. His smile never faltered, it never failed, and he leaned in towards the boy to where their noses almost touched before he began to speak, his arms folded behind his back.

"Hi there," he said in a quiet, smooth voice. Marcus felt his breath picking up in fear. "I hope you're comfortable, well, I guess in your case, comfortably tied up." There was a pause, then he unfolded his hands and stood up straight. He picked up a lint roller amongst his tools and made eye contact with the boy, "I hope you don't mind, I gotta tidy up for a little bit." He took the roller and gently glided it around on his shirt, making sure every little sound could be heard and that every little noise was savoured. "I gotta get this lint off. There's something lovely about being clean before the kill, but…I don't expect you to understand."

He rolled up his sleeves, then he looked back, savouring the fear in the blond's eyes, still holding his smile. He took a few steps forward, carefully running the lint roller up his thigh, sending chills down his new victim's spine. In that moment, he didn't know if it was from the sudden arousal or from fear.

"Today is your lucky day, we have a various selection of tools that we're going to use today," his voice was calm, quiet, and oddly soothing. His "s" sounds were drawn out just slightly, reminding him of his snake-like mannerisms. He picked up a little multi-purpose knife from the table, bringing it close to Marcus's eyes as if it were a show and tell at a child's preschool. He fiddled with it, unhinging every little mechanism the knife had to offer, "Now, I've always wanted to use the corkscrew." He pricked his finger on the pointed tip of the corkscrew, wincing when he did. There was a pause, and he looked back at his victim as if nothing happened, "I feel that this would fit really well in the eye socket. As well as this serrated edge right here."

He brought the edge to Marcus's ear and gently ran his finger across the blade multiple times, not hard enough to scratch himself, but hard enough to make that scratching noise. "Now, I'm going to try to be quick, as I have some library books to return this afternoon."

The Smiley Face Killer closed the contents of the multi-purpose knife and then set it back on the table, picking up a long, thick carving knife in the process. "Now this blade…can you hear how sharp that is?" He chuckled as he did the same thing as he did with the serrated edge, running his fingers along the blade to get that scratching sound. Only this time, he didn't have to bring it to his victim's ear; Marcus could hear it from where he was sitting. "Now that just doesn't cut, that cuts  _magnificently._  It might cut through some muscle and tendons if we're lucky," he paused. "I like to use this blade to cut my favourite type of potatoes, russet potatoes, they're great for making stir fry and hash browns."

He chuckled at himself, rejoicing silently at how petrified the twenty year old was before him. It was a feeling he thrived on. Marcus, by this point, was shaking, his tears continuously falling and staining his cheeks, and he was looking for any possible way there could be for him to escape.

There wasn't one.

"Now this next item I have," the Smiley Face Killer said as he placed the knife back onto the table, picking up the next toy he wanted to show off. "Speaking of potatoes, I have a little unorthodox potato peeler with a serrated edge," he took a breath, running his nail along the serrated edge to really showcase the sound. "I always wondered what it would be like to peel somebody's skin as if it was a potato. Almost like shaving, but instead of shaving hair off your face it's…shaving skin." He turned the peeler around, examining the carving mechanisms carefully, "We also have a really sharp blade right here, but we have enough of those that we're going to be using on you."

He placed it down, then he picked up a little blade that Marcus would never expect could be used in aiding a murder. But, after seeing this psycho for just a moment, he didn't doubt it at all anymore.

"Now my favourite tool, the butter knife, takes a little bit longer than usual," the Smiley Face Killer mused gently as he ran his fingers along the blade as he did with the others, like it was a routine. "The butter knife has that proper thickness, and a very sharp serrated edge. Usually meant for spreading butter, but I think in this case we're going to go," he paused, gently tapping the tip of the knife against the very edge of Marcus's lips, "In the corner of your mouth, or," he moved the little blade to his hands, forcing his palm to lie flat and pressing the tip between this middle and his index, "In-between your fingers."

He traced the tip of the blade up Marcus's arm and up his neck, then slowly down his chest and stopping just above his pelvis. He took the blade, then gently placed it back onto the table.

"One of my absolute favourite tools is just some small little DIY scissors," the murderer drug the blade from the table, holding it out in front of the boy. He suddenly snapped the scissors open and shut, causing Marcus to almost jump out of his skin. "Wow, imagine all the things we can do with these." He laughed, tinkering around with them for a pause that felt like hours, before he snapped them again, making his victim jump in fear yet again. "Scissors are great, you know, they really bring back those childhood memories of arts and crafts. It's interesting! Because tonight, you're going to be my arts and crafts project. How does that sound?" He grinned a little more, opening and closing the scissors repeatedly, bringing it up to his own ears, then over to the blond's, letting the sound resonate in the room. When he brought them back to his own ears, he just simply whispered, "Snippy, Snippy." He placed them back on the table, "Absolutely perfect for the earlobes, or tongue."

Marcus's eyes scanned around the room for any way that he could try to escape, or at least cause some form of distraction to extend his life, but he couldn't. He was stuck, and he knew this all too well. He knew that he was going to die.

_Isabelle…_

"Now this," The Smiley Face Killer continued as he pulled up a silver object similar to the knife with the corkscrew, but it was a little bigger. "This is a multi-tool, I've had this for years." He shifted the pliers up with a sharp snap, and he seemed appalled at the sound, so he retracted it and did it again. "This one opens," he explained as he pulled it apart, allowing the pliers to be easily seen. That's when Marcus remembered a specific body his sister had told him about, how the genitals were twisted off. The killer began to open and close the pliers like he did with the scissors, except this sound wasn't as sharp, this one was a little duller. "You hear that?" He made eye contact with his victim, and his smile widened, "I don't even need to tell you what that's for. You already know, don't you? I can see it in your eyes." He took a step closer, unravelling the extra parts of the multi-tool, "This is great! Because it has all kinds of things. It has a little curvy blade here, for all kinds of things. On the other side," he turned the tool over, "There's a very, very sharp saw. Don't touch this." He chuckled to himself darkly, "You don't have much of a choice though, do you?" He folded all the parts back up into the tool and lowered the pliers, closing it down back to the little thing it was, and he gently placed it back on the table.

"Now, before we do any of that, I need to prepare you," the Smiley Face Killer said, pulling out the small blade from the multi-purpose knife and made his way around, behind Marcus. It took him a moment to realise what was about to happen. The Elric always had the back of his head shaved and his hair cut short, giving him a cleaner look overall, but now he hated how easy it was for the calling card to be placed on his body because of it.

As he kissed his wet lips and trailed his tongue down his face and neck and began to slide his hand down his chest, Marcus wept. He began to leave his body. He began to inhabit the air and the silence. He wept and struggled so he would not feel. The murderer retracted his hand, only to slide up to the back of his head and slam it forward like he had done hours before. He knew what was coming.

He could feel the tip of the blade hovering above the back of his neck, his head still forced to be craning over painfully so that the skin stretched out like a canvas. He struggled as best he could, panting heavily and his face wet with his killer's saliva and his own tears. And then, swiftly, suddenly, in full force, blood was added to it.

Marcus had been in a lot of bad pain, sure, but if it weren't for that bullet on his sister's fourteenth, this action would have easily become the most painful experience he had to endure. Even then, it almost started to feel like this was quickly becoming the most painful experience of his life. The killer made sure that he was slow, that he took his time carving the smiley face into the skin on the back of his neck, chuckling darkly to himself at the pain his victim was feeling. This sick son of a bitch really did enjoy inflicting torture. Marcus screamed into the duct tape, knowing too well that nobody could hear him and that it didn't change anything. The event lasted about a solid minute, but to the Elric, it felt like a solid hour. It only made him shudder to imagine how long it was going to be when he was going to receive the full blunt of the torture designed to kill him.

Just as the Smiley Face Killer finished carving up his calling card, he watched as the blood oozed out from the back of the boy's neck and dripped onto the ground below. He flicked his tongue along the injury. Marcus wasn't sure if it was to get a taste, or if it was to cause his wound to sting as badly as it did.

There was a moment, where the murderer let Marcus have just a small amount of time to breathe, watching him shake with every sob and hiccup every time he'd try to breathe. It was hideous.

The killer calmly strode around to be in front of his victim, finally letting go of his head so he could look up. When he did, not only did it hurt his neck even worse by scrunching the wound together, but he also found himself eye to eye with his captor.

It was in that moment came a faint noise from the upstairs, a gentle knock at his wooden door. It had to have been the most perfect timing in the world, and Marcus let out a sigh of relief to think that it would buy him some time. And it did.

The Smiley Face Killer sighed, taking off his gloves making careful sure no blood was visible on him, "I'll take care of it, and then I'll be right back." He went up the stairs and opened the door, only to be greeted with a little girl with blonde hair.

Isabelle stood on the porch, absolutely petrified that she might have found the killer; which, in turn, meant that she found her brother. His appearance seemed to match the description, and she reminded herself that she just had to stay calm.

"Hi, sorry to bother you so late. My name is Isabelle, also known as the Dead Aim Alchemist. I just received a call from a concerned neighbour about you. They say that you seemed to be feeling a little blue, and they were afraid about you doing bad things to yourself," she said. She knew she had to be careful, since nobody in the military had a particular interest in mental health, and she knew that she had to think of a reason to sound official, even though she was holding up her pocket watch.

"What do they think I'm going to do?" the Burgundy Haired Man asked, eyeing the little alchemist suspiciously, but not questioning her motives.

"Well, may I come inside? It's a bit chilly out and I think this conversation would best be said in private," the Elric girl requested politely, to which she received a nod in response. The door opened all the way and he stepped aside, allowing her to walk in. Inside, everything looked normal and everything seemed fine, that is, until they stepped into the basement. Isabelle glanced around, taking note at how the owner of the house locked the door as she entered. Something was up. "They told me that they think you were going to kill yourself."

The man sighed as he finished fastening the final lock and turned back to face the child, "I can assure you that I would never do such a thing. May I ask who sent you this call?"

"They wished that this information be classified," she lied. She felt an uneasy atmosphere in the household. She knew someone else was here, she could practically feel it. Her senses were screaming at her, telling her to run to the basement, and she didn't know why. "May I ask, have you been feeling depressed recently?"

In the basement, Marcus could faintly hear his killer and some woman's voice, asking him probing questions about his current mental health and his responses to each question. He knew he had heard the voice somewhere, until he heard the voice put a specific twang on her "i" sound.

_Isabelle!_

He struggled profusely, trying to make as much noise and to scream as loud as he could with the duct tape over his mouth to try and get her to hear him. He knew the real reason why she was here. He wasn't stupid, and he most certainly knew that she wouldn't respond to some call meant for a psychiatrist. He thought as hard as he could, trying to get her to hear his thoughts as his muffled screams only echoed in the cold basement walls.  _Isabelle! Isabelle! I'm here! I'm here! The basement! Get to the basement!_

"While I'm here, may I ask you one more question? It's a bit more of a personal question, for an investigation I'm doing on my own," Isabelle asked, to which the other man nodded. She took a deep breath, pulling out a picture and holding it up for the man to see, a recent picture of her and her brother, taken by the General. "I'm looking for my brother, he went missing not that long ago. Have you seen him?"

The Smiley Face Killer leaned in and looked at the photo, Isabelle watching his every action intensely. His eyes widened just slightly before returning to normal, his hand twitched behind his back, and his entire demeanour seemed to change.  _He knows_. He looked back up at the girl and smiled sweetly, "No, doll, I'm sorry to say that I haven't. I hope you find him, though," he lied, his smile never faltering, but a sinister look in his eyes surfaced.

There was a moment of silence, where the Dead Aim Alchemist just nodded, musing to herself quietly as she felt this man eye her carefully. She knew this was the man, she was sure of it, and it was now or never. Everything went so fast, and the girl whipped out her pistol and aimed it at the killer in front of her, "Freeze! Put your hands where I can see them and get on your knees!" He murderer just laughed, throwing his hands up in the air sarcastically, then he darted around the corner to get out of her line of fire, and also to hide himself. "I said freeze!" she screeched, running after him, weapon aimed and ready to shoot if necessary.

She turned in to the room that he zipped into, quickly skimming around each corner to make sure that he wasn't about to pounce on her. Instead, he attacked her from behind, a switchblade in his hand, about to stab her in the chest. She took him by the wrist and flipped him over her shoulder, and firing a bullet into his leg to keep him from getting back up.

Quickly, the girl leapt over the man in pursuit of finding the basement. She could practically feel it calling to her, sensing a thought in her head that wasn't her own. Her mind was screaming twenty different things at once, but one thing stood out more than the rest, etching itself into her brain to stay there forever:  _Marcus._

Isabelle found herself face to face with a door, locked by a deadbolt and a chain lock. She quickly untwisted the deadbolt and removed the chain from its clasp, opening the door and running downstairs. She saw a faint fog from where the two drastic temperatures clashed for dominance, hearing muffled screaming and rummaging coming from the bottom. Once she reached the bottom of the steps, she turned, finding a soft glow of yellow where a head was, shaking to and fro with every twist he would try to wriggle himself out of the seat he was strapped to. The heaviness in her heart subsided, and she couldn't help but feel her eyes start to well slightly, overwhelmed in relief.

_He's alive._

"Marcus!" she cried out, running towards her brother, stopping behind him once she saw blood seeping from his neck. She wiped at it, only to find a smiley face carved into his skin. She started to tremble slightly, knowing that she barely made it in time before it was too late. Letting out a shaky breath, she whipped herself around to stand in front of her brother, watching the relief flood from his eyes as teardrops. Neither of them had been so happy to see each other in their whole life up to this point. "I'm going to get you out of here, okay? Everything is going to be fine, I promise. It's all going to be okay."

She brought her hands to the straps around his wrists, the ones that were binding him to the seat, and she began to undo the buckles. It was hard to do when they were rushing, and even harder when her nerves couldn't keep her hands still. She managed to get one of them undone before Marcus started squealing at her, writhing and trying to get her attention with his now free hand, all noise muffling to nothing. She looked at him, "Marcus, what is it?" He pointed behind her and screamed into the duct tape.

When she turned, she found that the Smiley Face Killer not only had her gun, but was aiming it at her. Just as she turned to face him, he fired, and luckily for the Elrics, he was a terrible shot. Maybe that's why he used blades. The bullet grazed past her ear, ripping off a small chunk from her ear harp, knocking her head backwards. She cried out, clutching her ear as she stumbled backwards, lost her balance, and fell on top of her brother before tumbling down to the ground. Even with the duct tape, Isabelle could hear Marcus scream for her, her name muffled by the silver elastic on his mouth.

She looked up, only to find the pistol aimed at her head once more. Her hands quickly reached up and grabbed the weapon, aiming it down to the floor and she wrenched at his wrist, watching him let go of the firearm with a satisfying snap. As he bent down to pick up the gun with his good hand, Isabelle pushed past him as she stood, running to the table and grabbing the thick carving knife as her weapon of choice. She turned sharply and ducking her head down just as fast as she turned. She was thankful that she did, because he fired just as she lowered her head.

Isabelle quickly crawled under the table and dashed off into the darkness, her entire body shaking with every fast step that she took, and hot tears rimmed the bottom of her eyelids. The Smiley Face Killer laughed and pursued, a wide grin on his face.

It felt like a giant game of cat-and-mouse, and she was nothing more than one of those little vermin, scurrying around in a desperate attempt to shake the man off of her trail. While all this took place, Marcus ripped the duct tape off his mouth with his free hand, and began to fumble around with the other strap that held his other wrist down. Both Elrics were panting heavily, their hearts skipped like a rabbit and thudded against their chest, like a hammer against cloth. The best thing Isabelle could do at this moment was think, and it felt like her mind wasn't going to help her anytime soon.

Isabelle whipped around to face her brother, starting to help him undo the clasp around his hand, both of them murmuring quick, hushed whispers of comfort to each other.

They honestly thought that they were going to die.

That's when the Smiley Face Killer pounced on top the girl, pinning her to the ground as she screamed. He took the knife from her hand and tossed it to the other side of the room, watching it slide across the floor, creating sparks as the blade scraped against the smooth concrete. His hands tightened themselves around her throat, practically getting off at the sound of her struggle for even a gasp of air. He inched his legs on top of her, sitting on her chest and borderline grinding his pelvis against her chest. She felt her vision fade from black to what she was seeing, the sound of her brother screaming for her growing farther and farther away as his grip around her neck increased with intensity and she knew she had to act fast. She reached her hands up from his, scratching as his face, trying to gouge out his eyes.

Like brother like sister.

His hands flung up to protect his face again, knowing full well what these Elric children were capable of with just their fingernails. That's when Isabelle seized her chance, shoving him off of her body and lunging forward, grabbing the knife that slid so far away from her reach. As the both stood, the child turned back around and sprinted, leaping at the murderer, impaling the knife into his chest. He cried out as they fell, reaching up to try and stop her from taking his life, and that was the last noise he made. It was swiftly cut off by a clean slice at his head, chopping through his brain and clanging against the concrete below.

The tables had turned, and now there was Isabelle, straddled atop, stabbing over and over again into his head and chest. Even after nothing but chunks remained of the top half of the Smiley Face Killer, the girl still didn't stop from chopping at those chunks over and over again until nothing remained. The only thing that stopped her was when her brother finally gained the courage to speak up again, calling her name one last time, gently, soothingly, and comforting.

"Isabelle, stop."

She paused, shaking, looking at the blood that now covered her arms and face, and she felt a slight sick relief when she knew that it was this psycho's blood. He deserved every little bit of it all.

Isabelle slowly stood, her breathing faltering, almost hiccupping with every failed attempt to control her inhales and exhales. She turned back to face Marcus, who had since freed himself completely from the straps that bound him to that awful chair. She was even seeing the slight fear in his eyes when he saw the crimson sprayed all across the front of her body, even in her hair, creating a beautiful blend of orange. They stopped, just looking at each other for a brief moment, before the girl realised what he saw – what she had  _done_ – and a sob lodged itself in her throat. The tears that lined the tops of her cheeks began to descend, and she fell to her knees, trembling, and wept, repeating a simple phrase over and over, almost as if she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince her brother.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm  _sorry–_ "

"Oh Izzy," Marcus spoke in a soft voice as he knelt down beside her, pulling her body close to his and holding her as tightly as he could without hurting her. She clutched him as if he would die right then and there if she were to even think about letting go of him, in fact, it was starting to hurt him at how tightly she was holding him. He didn't say anything, knowing full well that she was right to be scared, and that she was right to have been so overprotective. And to think that the last things he had told her before this moment would have been something hurtful. He didn't want to think about it. He was, in fact, sobbing with his sister, but quietly enough to not worry the child, letting her cry it out. He felt that she needed it so much more than he ever could. "It's okay, it's okay. We're all okay. I'm right here, babygirl. It's okay."

That name hurt her even worse, even though she knew that he didn't mean to. The only person that had called her babygirl before was her father and her mother. Marcus seemed to pick up on the fact that saying that bothered her, so he stuck with what he was used to saying to his baby sister.

They sat there together for a short while, before he carefully rubbed Isabelle's shoulder, guiding her up and holding her close even as they stood. "Let's go home."

He kept one arm wrapped around her shoulders, their bodies side by side as they walked up the stairs and towards the front door. Marcus unlocked the front door and opening it, only to be blinded by flashlights and spotlights, pistols aimed in their direction. Both of the Elric children raised their hands in front of their eyes to block out the blinding light, only to hear one of the men shout, "Freeze! Stay where you are!"

Isabelle peeked between her fingers, her eyes adjusting to the light, and she heard audible gasps from the crowd of military officers. She heard one especially, and she saw a man push his way through the crowd, calling for the Elric kids. The General ordered everybody to lower their weapons as cameras flashed and tried to take any photo they could of a scene that would be published in all textbooks that talked about the infamous Smiley Face Killer. "Isabelle, Marcus," he said softly as he came up to the kids, looking at them both, noting a glossiness that no longer resided in their eyes. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the girl, as it was polite, and he helped guide them down the stairs as the Lieutenant shove her way toward her husband and godchildren.

As they were guided down the steps and into a military vehicle, the Lieutenant Colonel made eye contact with his subordinate, "You can tell me what happened later." She nodded, hopping into the car with her brother and the General and his Lieutenant. The car doors were slammed shut. The cameras kept flashing, even as they drove away.

* * *

Dawn had just started to crack in the sky when they arrived at the hospital, both Elric children taken inside to be checked for injuries. The worst Isabelle had suffered was her bullet wound in the harp of her ear, while Marcus's worst came from the carving on the back of his neck, which would leave behind a scar that would reside with him for the rest of his days.

He would still feel it sometimes, the blade, and the agonising fear that he was going to die right then and there. After this incident, he would grow his hair out a little bit, especially in the back, where his hair would now be rather shaggy, but covering the scar on the back of his neck. When it was healed, there would be times where he would lace his fingers over the lines permanently etched into his skin. For a long while, Marcus wouldn't be able to handle being around basic kitchen blades, since he would have been quickly triggered by the events that happened in the Smiley Face Killer's basement.

Sometimes, the panic would strike him at random moments. If he had the misfortune of being stuck with an attack while he was in public, he would lock himself away in a restroom, trying to control his breathing and get his anxiety under control. He would often have nightmares of this incident, and he would get them even until the day he died. Most of the time, these panics came to Marcus shortly after dinnertime, and he would hold tightly onto the back of a chair and count to ten to help him forget the trauma he had seen that night. Whenever this would happen, Isabelle would join him, but she would wrap her arms around him from behind, gently, and resting her head carefully against his back as a silent way to comfort her older brother.

Speaking of the girl, Isabelle had her own shock to deal with that she took with her from the incident. She had her own fair share of nightmares, but they weren't about being killed like one would think – after all she was almost murdered herself from trying to save her brother from a psycho that wanted him dead for no reason. She'd wake up with a scream lodged in her throat from having a vivid night terror about walking up on the scene to find her brother dead, or worse, watching him be mutilated and murdered right in front of her. She couldn't handle the thought of losing him. She almost did, and she vowed that she would never let it get that close again.

During those nights, Isabelle would climb out of her bed and tiptoe into her brother's room right next door. She stopped going outside. She stopped sleeping on a tree branch. Hell, she even stopped going to bed later than everybody else, since her mind would do horrendous things to her while she sat alone in an empty room. Damn her for having such a vivid and grotesque imagination.

She would carefully step into her brother's bedroom, taking as many precautions as possible to make sure that she didn't wake him from his slumber. After that, she would crawl into bed with him, not laying on top of him to wake him, but close enough to hear him breathing, where she would sleep there for the rest of the night. Those nights she would wake up to find herself being held in her brother's arms; as if he, too, would have the same reoccurring nightmare about losing his baby sister. When she would find herself in that position, Isabelle would carefully reposition herself to where she was even closer to Marcus, but pressing an ear against his chest so that way she could hear his heart.

And it was still beating.

* * *

During the latter half of that week, the General worked intently with the Führer to wrap up all the loose ends in regards to the Smiley Face Killer case. It was closed relatively easy once he was caught and killed, but that didn't stop the public outcry that came after it was leaked that Isabelle was the one that killed him.

They would have been fine had it been anybody else, but the fact that it was a child that had to do the dirty work was something that the public just couldn't accept to go without the adults being shamed for not keeping her and her brother safe. This continued until Isabelle herself had to step forward and give a small speech about the events that took place the night she slaughter the Smiley Face Killer, and how there was no adult in the wrong except for the killer himself. After this, the citizens responded relatively coolly, accepting things for what they were and returning about their daily lives.

One day, Isabelle had went to the Führer and made a special request. "I want you remove the outlaw on homosexuality," she told him simply, "And I will not stop fighting you until you do. If you want, I can even rally up enough people to help push the change."

"Are you threatening to start a riot, Dead Aim?" The Führer looked her as if she were insane.

"I said 'if you want,'" she shrugged. "These people were the ones that helped me catch the Smiley Face Killer. They were the ones being prosecuted. They've been through enough, you and I both know by now that something has to change."

And just like that, the government guaranteed equality for all sexual orientations in a matter of two short days.

There was one day more, a night at home after the General and everybody else returned to the Estate. There was the usual dinnertime, small talk, and other little things, but everybody made their way to their beds rather early this day. After all, it was rather exhausting, and they had the day off the next day. Nothing was better than getting a full night of rest.

When the General flopped onto his bed with a sigh of relief, the Lieutenant hesitated. He turned and looked at her, as she stood, fiddling around with her fingers.

"What's the matter, Lieutenant?" He asked, sitting up and looking at her with slight concern.

"There's something I have to tell you, sir. It's something I've been meaning to tell you for a couple of days now," she began, and then her words trailed off. She looked undeniably nervous, her mouth dry and unable to form a coherent sentence. Mustang looked at her, wanting to make sure she was alright, and then she took a deep breath. "Roy," Riza said, and there was a pause. There was such a long and agonising pause. But, the next words out of her mouth were ones that changed their lives forever.

"I'm pregnant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That only took too long to write! What was it, a couple weeks? Good lord, but thankfully I managed to get it out. Alright guys, I'm going to take a small break from this fanfiction, so I can go write a chapter of Bond and clear my head, and then I'll come back here! Don't worry, I'm only alternating between fanfictions for each chapter, so there won't be a hiatus longer than a month. Once again, comments and opinions are so appreciated! Thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you guys again soon!
> 
> -Elena


	3. REWRITTEN VERSION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the rewritten version of "For the People." Already, I see improvement in myself and I'm so proud of how far I had come. But, I wanted you all to see for yourselves. This was written yesterday and today. I didn't have a beta for the original, so I didn't ask my beta to go over this one. Be warned, it isn't polished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR (good to know I did these even back then): a lot of shit. Language, violence, death, homophobia (specifically, the killer targeted homosexuals and used some bigoted language)  
> SONGS USED TO GET IN THE MOOD (yeah but this is new): The Stranger Things (both 1 and 2) soundtracks  
> This is the rewritten version of the chapter! I only skimmed through it to get a rough idea as to what to write about, and now I’m diving back in. Jesus, this is surreal. I haven’t written for Dead Aim Alchemist in over a year (this specific chapter was from June of 2016), and this is probably my favourite chapter I had written at the time, despite the horrific cringe that came with it. If you want me to rewrite this whole fic, let me know, and I might see if I will. This new chapter took me only a collective total of a few hours to write, while before I think took a few weeks. Also – before you cringe at the name, Xion was a character a friend of mine had made back in my roleplay days in 2012/2013 – so this character is tribute to her. I hope you guys enjoy! And I hope this pushes you to continue writing because while improvement is invisible, it’s very real. Thank you for pushing me to continue writing :)  
> -Elena

“What is this?” Isabelle asked, looking up at the Lieutenant Colonel and gesturing to the stack of papers that were dropped on her desk only moments after she had arrived.

“It’s our current case,” he replied, pointing to the papers to make her look down at them. “Read up. We’ve been stuck on this case for a couple weeks now and a new pair of eyes will do it some good.”

“I just got here,” Isabelle made a face, flipping through the dozens of pages. There had to have been a hundred, at least. She could tell most of them were profiles – those are an easy read – but she couldn’t understand how they were stuck if they had packets to work from. Surely, they had solved cases with less information. “Isn’t there like, a tutorial or an introduction or something?”

“That is your introduction,” the Lieutenant Colonel said simply, pointing down at the papers again. “You’re a genius, so I’m sure you can handle it.”

“Genius is an overstatement Fletcher, but sure.” Isabelle mumbled, taking the first packet from the stack and placing it in front of her to read it.

“Isabelle, do you even know your written exam score?” Fletcher asked her, an eyebrow raised because he genuinely couldn’t tell if what she said was sarcasm or not. She shook her head, and that’s when he nodded, pausing for a moment before revealing: “It was fifty-seven.”

She stopped, looking up at him like he was crazy. It was _impossible._ She wasn’t the only one, too. The sentence revealing such a statement had resulted in eyes from all across the room staring in their general direction, and she could feel what they were saying. Shock. Denial. Completely unprepared. The essays were scored on a basis of fifteen, the total score comprised by a cabinet of four people – the Führer, the General, the Brigadier General, and the Colonel. The average score was a twenty or so. “That’s not right,” she said. “It can’t be.”

“Well, I didn’t grade them, so I don’t know what all you wrote down, but congratulations, you wrote the highest exam score in history. Higher than your dad, even. So yes, genius, get to work.”

With that, Isabelle nodded, thinking on it for a moment before taking a deep breath and then looking to the papers. She couldn’t understand how she scored higher than her father – but then again, she had no idea what his score was. He was a real genius, but most of his smarts came with alchemy and other forms of knowledge she wasn’t the strongest in – plus she remembered him saying he didn’t finish his essay in time.

She looked at the first paragraph, the title just above it searing into her brain as if she had seen it a million times before.

_The Smiley Face Killer._

Well, that’s a name and a half. But a few sentences in it became obvious as to why the murderer was given a name.

_All bodies have been found with a smiley face carved in the skin on the back of the victim’s neck._

She skipped ahead for a moment, quickly glancing at the profiles and came to realise that these were the profiles of the victims. They were all male and in their early twenties – other than that there was no other likeness about them at all. _Shit._ Marcus falls into that category.

And there had to have been a damn good reason why he hasn’t been found yet if the first victim was killed over a month ago – kill five was last week. She knew that the chances of the serial killer targeting her brother were slim, but she wasn’t going to take that risk. Hopefully, after this, she could finally get started on her own case and hopefully find her family. Wherever they were. If they were even still alive.

With a deep breath, she put the profiles to the side, and then turned back to the reports.

 

* * *

 

“So, you mean to tell me that Investigations is coming cold on everything?”

Isabelle nodded, not looking up from the file she was reading as she ignored her food. The General watched her for a moment, waiting for her to take a bite, before he reached across and took the packet and sat it down next to him. He gestured to her food. She groaned, and then started to eat so she could get the file back quicker. “I want you to keep Marcus here after his apprenticeship every night until this guy is found,” she requested with a mouth full of food. “There hasn’t been a specific trend among the victims yet other than they’re all males around his age.”

“There’s nothing else in common with the victims?” The General eyed her carefully, and she nodded. He was out of the loop about Investigations was doing. He had an idea, but they reported to the Colonel – and he wasn’t the Colonel anymore. “You know what that means, right?” The girl looked up at him, raising an eyebrow to tell him to continue. “It means that there’s something he knows personally about the victims that we _don’t_ know. It’s easy to spot outer traits, but this guy is targeting based on something they like, do, or have – something that they are that we have no idea about because it either was never shared or was just never put on file.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Skeletons in the closet, Isabelle. Like if they were all related to something that happened in this guy’s life. Like if they have a trait that’s invisible to the public. Something extremely personal to the victim. This means that he’s stalked them, and for a decent amount of time before deciding if they were just right.” He folded his hands together and leaned on his arms. “What I’m saying is this: are you _sure_ that age and sex are the only things these victims have in common? What if they were all prostitutes – it’s cliché but it’s common – what if they were all bullies to the murderer at one point? You have to think about it like that.”

Isabelle made a face, thinking on it and lolling her head from side to side for a moment as she thought before she just shook her head. “But that doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t match the type of kills,” she mumbled. “There has to be a reason for complete _hatred._ Just look at the bodies. Like, they almost don’t even look human after the killer was done with them. What’s sickening is that you can tell he had tortured the hell out of them while they were alive before he killed them. It’s so fucked up and you can tell there’s something extreme about this guy’s views beyond them roughing him up for some lunch money back in first grade.”

Mustang thought for a moment, eyes fixed on the cafeteria door before he saw Marcus walk in. Something about him sparked something in him, and he turned back to face Isabelle, keeping quiet for a moment to debate on his words before prompting them. “What if they’re all alchemists – what if they all knew something about the whereabouts of your father and your uncle?”

“It’s not likely. That’s not something that would spark enough hate, and nobody could tell that based on just a week of research. Besides, with something like that you’d have to interact with someone to figure that out. They wouldn’t interact otherwise the victims would have known something was up.”

“Why not? Those people that attacked your family back in October seemed to have known quite a lot about you and you didn’t even know it.”

Isabelle froze. She looked up from her food at the General and they kept eye contact for a moment before it was interrupted by her brother greeting them and sitting down right across from her.

“Remember what I said. Keep your eyes peeled.”

With that, the General stood and left, putting the untouched parts of his food between the siblings so they could take what they wanted. Marcus watched him leave before he turned back to Isabelle. “What was that about?”

Isabelle sat there for a moment, unable to speak because of how that theory made sense, and if that was the case, her brother was in much more danger than she thought. “We were talking about the case I’m working on. It’s a serial killer.” She stopped herself, before shoving Marcus’s food that he took out back into his bag and then gathering her things to drag him into the Investigations Department.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s your first day on the job and _that’s_ what you’re bombarded with?” Marcus gasped slightly at the workload on her desk. She didn’t respond, crouching by her desk chair and rummaging through the files she placed there after she finished reading previous files. She picked up the profiles of the five victims and then brought them to her brother, opening them up to show the pictures of their faces.

“Do you know any of them?” Isabelle asked.

Marcus studied the pictures for a moment, before spotting someone, and then he nodded, pointing to that particular photo. “I’ve seen him at the bar I go to sometimes. He’s a great guy.” He thought for a moment. “Damn, he was murdered? I just thought he left town.”

“Bar?” Isabelle cocked her head to the side and stared at him for a moment. “You don’t go to bars. You don’t even drink.”

Her brother shook his head and looked around before looking back at her, his voice low, even though nobody was in the office. “I don’t. There’s a bar that’s practically hidden to everyone in Central. It’s…for people like me. I just go there to have a good time and be safe while being myself.”

Isabelle’s blood ran cold. “And he was there?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Marcus nodded, looking at the other files and pointing at the rest. “They all were. I just only ever talked to this guy out of them.”

The silence practically echoed. It took him moment to realise where she was getting at for him to turn and meet her eyes. They had a different problem on their hands – it sparked enough hate, that’s for sure, and the traits were completely _invisible_ – and it had nothing to do with her father. Marcus was in great, great danger now.

“Give me a source.” She said finally.

“What?” Marcus asked.

“Give me a random source otherwise I’d have to tell Investigations your name.”

 

* * *

 

Back at home the siblings debated for a long time on how to take Isabelle to the bar he normally would visit. They wanted to do this in the most discreet and safest way possible along with the detective getting the most information she can as quick as possible. They thought the obvious approach – that she was like him – but that would spark unwanted attention and potentially make her a target. They thought the ‘straight-to-the-point’ approach where she just walked in with her status in the military and promised to keep the place secret if they gave her interviews – but that could very easily backfire. But then they deemed it best if Isabelle kept as little interaction with everyone as possible – going in as an ally that was his sister – and she would study them from afar.

As they walked outside, the amber glow of streetlamps illuminating their path, Isabelle came to a revelation and she stopped for a moment. Marcus turned around, looking back at her and watched their breath formed quiet trails of mist that faded within seconds in the air. “What’s wrong Izzy?” he asked.

“My accent. I’m clearly from Resembool – and so are you. Wouldn’t that ring a bell? Two siblings from Resembool and they both just came into town just a few months ago. I’m sure these people read the newspaper and probably know who we are.”

“Fuck, you’re right,” Marcus sighed, a long puff of smoke coming from his mouth and swirling up into the air as he looked up at the sky for a moment, thinking. He looked back down at his sister and then asked, “you remember the Morse I taught you, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Then you’re mute. You’re a friend from out of town visiting for the weekend and you can’t speak. How’s that?”

Isabelle thought on the idea, toying around with it before she nodded. “Yeah. Perfect. Let’s go.”

The bar was nice – already walking in the atmosphere was welcoming and the people greeting them were friendly, but Isabelle could literally feel the tension on her shoulders when they spotted Marcus with a new kid.

“Hey, Rudy!” the bartender smiled at him and waved them over. “Who’s the girl there?” he asked, gesturing to Isabelle behind him.

“Oh, she’s a friend of mine from out of town. Don’t worry, she’s an ally.” With that sentence alone, she heard a collective four sighs of relief as they walked up and sat down at the counter.

“That’s all I needed to know,” he laughed nervously before looking to her. He was a big, dark man with a bushel of hair running down his arms as he crossed them, holding onto his elbow. There was a tattoo of a Daisy on the inside of his forearm. His smile to her was warm. “What’s your name, doll?”

Isabelle stared blankly, turning to Marcus with a distressed look on her face in hopes that would signal for him to say something, and it did. He tsked at himself and then intervened. “Sorry, she can’t talk, I forgot to tell you that. Her name’s Liesel.” He turned to his sister. “This is Xion. He and his daughter Daisy run this place and they’re basically teddy bears.”

Xion laughed and then reached out, shaking Isabelle’s hand. “Nice to meet you Liesel. Your friend Rudy is in good hands here, I promise you that.”

Isabelle pursed her lips before forcing them upwards slightly and she nodded. She reached her arm over to put her hand in front of Marcus on the counter and made a series of taps, not breaking eye contact with the bartender.

“What’s she doing?” he asked.

“Morse code,” Marcus replied, pausing until she finished and then looked back at him. “She said it’s very nice in here. She likes how you keep the place.”

“Thank you,” he smiled, then it faded when he studied her for a moment. “I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

“Well, she’s very plain looking. A lot of people look like her,” Marcus shrugged. Isabelle knew that he was doing it to cover them, but still she looked over and kicked his leg to pretend to be offended. Xion laughed, waving it off.

“You look tense, doll. Do you want a drink?” he asked. She shook her head sweetly, but did a curt nod to thank him anyway. Being undercover was a lot harder than she thought.

“She’s nervous about me,” Marcus laughed lightly. He lowered his voice. “I just told her about that killer running around earlier today. She’s scared for my safety, is all. She thinks I’m his type.”

Instantly, Isabelle felt eyes on her. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, trying to look around as nonchalantly as possible to try and find anyone staring, but there was no one in her sights. The bartender thought for a moment, confused, before he remembered the Smiley Face Killer being in the newspaper for weeks now. He had almost tuned it out. “I mean, it makes sense. The victims reported have all been around your age,” he said, but then looked back to the girl. “But I don’t think that he’ll be targeted. Don’t worry. This place is a safe haven.”

Isabelle tapped. “Are you sure?” Marcus translated. He paused, then made a face. “I mean, she has a point, all the victims were all at this bar.”

Xion stopped, and then suddenly his face hardened slightly. Isabelle kicked him twice to try and communicate that he fucked up, but it had already been too late. “How did you know that?”

“I…uh…” Marcus froze for a moment, before he stuttered his next words, despite his sister furiously tapping the counter to tell him to backtrack and say he at least thinks so. “I read it in the paper this morning.”

“That wasn’t in the paper this morning.”

She looked at him, her face obviously calling him a complete idiot, before she felt Xion lean in close to her and she had no choice but to turn and look at him in the eyes. She felt multiple pairs of eyes on her now. “Who are you, really?”

Isabelle stared, frozen for a second before her expression hardened and then she placed her pocket watch on the counter. Instantly, his head shot up and he shouted a warning, almost like a battle cry: _“State Alchemist!”_

Behind her she heard people scrambling to stand and run out as Xion leaned forward to grab her. She had to act fast or things would get uglier than it needed to be. She pulled out her gun and quickly fired it at the wall right before the door, and instantly she felt the room around her freeze.”

There was a moment of silence, where the bartender and the girl stared at each other eye to eye before finally, the girl spoke, her voice cold: “sit down.” At first, there was no reaction, but her head snapped backwards, and her voice raised. _“Now!”_

They obeyed, not taking their eyes off her until Isabelle turned away and tucked her gun back in between her jeans and her tailbone. She took a deep breath, leaning forward across the counter to look at Xion in his eyes again. “I didn’t want to have to do that.” She said simply. “He wasn’t kidding when he said I was an ally.”

The tension didn’t leave the air. He turned to look at Marcus and he asked, “how the hell did you get yourself involved with someone in the military? In _Investigations?”_

Marcus looked to Isabelle, and she just shrugged, shaking her head before he turned back to him and sighed. “She’s my sister,” he mumbled.

Suddenly, things seemed to click into place about the two of them, and that’s when the bartender decided to give a good, long, look at the siblings. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said finally, in complete disbelief. “You’re the _Elrics._ ”

 

* * *

 

Isabelle had never been more relieved to be at home again. They had to be quiet sneaking back in, however – it was the General’s place they were staying at, after all, and if he or the Lieutenant found out they were out this late they would be crucified. Especially at a time like this with things the way they are.

“Hey, sorry for blowing your cover,” Marcus said finally when they successfully snuck back in and made it into Isabelle’s room. “I panicked.”

Isabelle shrugged it off, tucking her gun underneath her pillow and taking off her jacket to hang it. “It’s alright. Things didn’t escalate as bad as we thought it would and I did get some information.”

Marcus shrugged, making a face. “I know but still.”

Isabelle waved it off again, and then just turned to him once she got out her nightgown from her drawer. “I don’t want you going out alone, though,” she said. “Things are too heated and you’re at risk even more so now.”

He was going to argue, but instead he just sighed and nodded. “You’ve got a point. I’ll just play it by ear and see how things are. Don’t worry.” With those words, he walked out, letting his sister get dressed in peace so they could go to bed and tackle the next day.

The next day wasn’t easy to tackle.

Everybody was woken up by the phone loudly ringing at five in the morning – the General had to answer – and on the other end it was the Lieutenant Colonel frantically telling him to get Isabelle on the line.

“Hello?” She answered, her voice groggy and half awake, her head nodding as she kept blinking open her eyes with a scowl.

“You might want to see this.”

She didn’t know what _this_ was, until she arrived at the location she was given and found the Investigations department scattered around – police tape sectioning off a portion of the sidewalk and alleyway. Upon further investigation, there was a black cloth covering a large body. There was no blood leading up to the body – as if it had been dropped off there.

“They left something for you.”

Isabelle turned around, startled by the voice behind her only to see the Lieutenant Colonel holding something in his hands to give to her. It was a small slip of paper. Once she put her gloves on, she picked it up and opened the one-fold it had. It was addressed to her, and then it had a giant smiley face cover the picture.

“Have you had someone start checking the handwriting?” Isabelle asked, handing it back to her superior. He nodded.

“They’re on their way in from East City.”

She turned back to the body and didn’t take her eyes off it. “Has the victim been identified?” she asked, not looking back.

“Yeah,” Fletcher replied. “His name is Xion – he and his daughter run a bar downtown.” Isabelle felt her blood run ice cold, and she turned back to face her superior. “What’s wrong? Did you know him?”

“I interviewed him about the Smiley Face Killer literally _last night,_ ” Isabelle said quietly. “He gave me a lot of information I was going to bring in this morning.”

The Lieutenant Colonel narrowed his eyes and then looked at the body, then back at the note, then at his subordinate. “Smiley Face knew about this.” He raised the slip of paper. “Clearly.”

She nodded. There was no other explanation. He was _there_ last night. He thought a little more before taking a deep breath. “I want you off the case.”

_“What?”_

“You’re at risk, now. Smiley Face knows your name and saw who you were talking to – so without a doubt you’re on his watch list. I want you as low to the ground as possible and you can help us from the inside if you can.”

“With all due respect, sir—”

“—I’m not losing one of my most valuable soldiers,” Fletcher said simply, giving her a sharp look. He turned to one of his other subordinates, and gestured to her. “Escort her to headquarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

* * *

 

When Isabelle was escorted home that evening, she noticed that Marcus wasn’t there yet. The General and the Lieutenant normally didn’t come home until about an hour or so after she did anyway, but her brother was _always_ there waiting on her. Sometimes he even walked home with her. Hell, he normally had food ready and was listening to his radio shows.

_Today is not the fucking day, Marcus!_

Isabelle waited ten minutes, giving him the benefit of the doubt of possibly running late before she quickly called the automail shop Marcus was an apprentice at. They answered – but much to concern Marcus had left a couple hours ago, at his usual time.

_Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!_

She scrambled up the steps to put her jacket on, and then quickly dashed outside, directly towards the bar they were at last night. If he was there and alive, that motherfucker was going to get a heavy tongue lashing, but when she walked in and frantically looked around, she noticed that he wasn’t.

One of the people in there recognised her from the night before, and with a deep breath he stood up, instead of just staring at her in fear like everyone else had been. “Are you looking for Rudy?” he asked.

She didn’t have the time to correct him on her brother’s real name, so she just took a deep breath and nodded frantically, hoping that he would be somewhere close. “Have you seen him?”

“You just missed him. Some guy escorted him out – he said that you sent him.”

Isabelle didn’t send anyone.

 

* * *

 

Marcus woke up in a daze. His vision was out of focus and his breathing felt muggy and restricted, despite the air being cold around him.

_How did I get here?_

Oh, that’s right. He went to tell everyone in bar about Xion’s murder as a warning, but somewhere things went wrong. Everything was blurry, and he didn’t quite remember how, but some guy had come up telling him that Izzy had sent him to escort him home safely; and while something about him seemed off, he was believable. The next thing he knew he was being gassed in the passenger seat of the man’s car and again on the road when he tried to escape it.

He tried to speak, but his lips couldn’t move – no words escaped from his throat, either. When he tried again, he felt the unfaltering budge of tape holding his mouth together.

He tried to bring his hands up to rip it off, but his hands jolted in place from the ropes that held them there. If he wasn’t panicking before, he was now. Frantically, his head looked around as best as it could, trying to find some sign as to where he was and what he was doing here – and why he was like this.

“Hi there.”

Marcus jumped in his seat, turning his head to the source of the voice just behind him. The voice chuckled, a deep, growling thunder that replaced shivers with its rain. He stepped forward – and his eyes followed the sound until he was looking face to face with a man he had seen many times before. They had conversed at the bar together numerous times, and never in his life had he suspected him to—

“—How’re you feeling? I hope you’re comfortable. Err—well—I guess, in this case, comfortably…” he paused for a moment. “Tied up.”

He grinned at his own joke as if it was one of the funniest things to say – a horrifically malicious grin to match his wicked game. The man’s hair was a deep shade of burgundy, his eyes almost like the slits of a snake. Already, Marcus felt his body well with fear. He tried to kick himself away, hoping it would topple him over and break the chair so he could at least scramble up and run – but there was nothing. His legs didn’t move since they were attached to the legs of the chair by rope, too. Clearly, it had happened before for him to plan ahead.

“I’m sure you’re shocked. That’s fine, I expected you to be,” the man said to him with a maniacal smile. “You know, I’ve had my eye on you for a minute. You never struck me as the type. You know, the fag type.”

Marcus stared, eyes wide in fear, trying to wiggle in the seat as if that was going to loosen his restraints and set him free; but it didn’t do anything at all except make his captor laugh. “I’m sure your sister has told you all about me. Who I am, what I do, the whole nine yards – so I’m going to spare you the monologue.”

With a deep breath, he slapped his hands hard on the top of his legs, watching his victim jump at the sudden sound. He glided his hands down to his knees and used that to help push himself to a stand, walking to the right of Marcus and picking up a small switchblade from the wooden table and walking back to the boy tied to the chair. He knelt down so he could look Marcus in the eye, not saying anything as he brought the small object up between their face, before flicking the blade out.

Marcus flinched, his breathing shaking, and he closed his eyes when he saw him lower the blade. With the loud yell of _“Look at me!”_ shooting into his ear, he jumped again, and this time opened his eyes to do as he was told. “Very good,” he cooed, before he brought up his arm and rolled up his sleeve. He didn’t say anything, but then he just gently scraped the blade against his skin faintly, the hair on his arm gliding off with ease. He turned back to face his victim with a wide smile and spoke with awe. “I just sharpened it last night. Isn’t that incredible?” He used his free fingers to touch the skin, as if the hands tied behind his back would feel it. “Look at how smooth that is! Wow,” he pondered out loud before looking back again. “I can’t wait to use this.”

He stood up again, and then walked behind Marcus, who, frantically tried to use this time to thrash and struggle within the chair to try and somehow find a way out of this disaster. However, he suddenly felt a hand on the back of his head to yank his body backwards, before the hand shoved his forward and down, holding it there to keep him from moving. He knew what was coming.

He could feel the tip of the blade hovering above his skin for a few seconds as his chest heaved; Marcus closed his eyes tightly to prepare for the pain he was about to be forced to receive, the saltiness in his eyes slid down his cheeks and he could practically smell it trying to slip behind the tape onto his tongue.

“Oh, and yes, this is really going to hurt.”

The killer made sure to be slow, keeping Marcus’s head as still as possible so his neck wouldn’t twist the wrong way and kill him prematurely. This was a careful and tedious procedure, after all. He was a tattoo artist, but he didn’t need any ink. He didn’t even finish one of the eyes (it was only a straight line) and already the tape wasn’t going to be enough to muffle his screaming (what a fucking crybaby). The second line came only a mere second after the first was finished, and it wasn’t long after that either when he drew the simple curved smile just underneath of the two eyes.

He placed the knife on Marcus’s lap when he finished, relishing in the clean cuts that bled there on his neck before he finally let go of his victim’s head with another push forward. He stepped back in front of him, kneeling down to retrieve his weapon and using it to tilt his chin to look at him. He looked fucking pathetic.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

He laughed, taking the knife back to the table where he cleaned it and set it to the side. His eyes glided around his collection, thinking about which toy to use next on him before he suddenly heard knocking coming from the upstairs. He looked up at the ceiling, before turning back to face Marcus, who didn’t take his fear and tear-ridden eyes off him. His captor brought a simple finger to his lips as he smiled, before he walked upstairs to answer the door.

The voice carried a twang on her vowels.

_Isabelle!!_

He heard her upstairs, asking him a series of questions that were completely unrelated about the Smiley Face Killer; instead, it was something about some victim of some suicide (it’s all bullshit). But, after a moment of silence, she finally spoke again.

“Also, on an unrelated note, I’m looking for my brother. I was wondering if you’d seen him.”

The killer’s tone changed. He knows. “No, I haven’t.”

A pause. “I haven’t even shown you what he looks like.”

The pause lingered, before suddenly he heard loud running and cackling, Isabelle screaming at him at the top of her lungs. _“Freeze!” She screeched. “Put your hands where I can see them! What did you do to him?!”_

The footsteps split, and suddenly in a fast patter down the steps Marcus tensed, bracing himself for what his killer was about to do next, but he was greeted by his sister’s voice instead.

“Marcus! Marcus!” She cried, leaping down the last few steps and rushing up behind him to hug him from behind quickly. She pulled apart after just a couple seconds and she flipped out her knife and started to saw at the ropes binding his hands together. She noticed he had already carved in his calling card on the back of his neck, and she cursed under her breath. “I’m here, I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m getting us out of here.” She spoke fast, and halfway through her sentence she had cut through the thick ropes and walked in front of Marcus to start to work on his legs.

Marcus quickly brought his hands to his face, wiping his eyes and then ripping the tape from his mouth. “Isabelle, he was at the _bar,”_ he said. “He was hiding in plain _sight.”_

“I know—”

“—There you are!”

Isabelle looked up and Marcus turned back, noticing the Smiley Face Killer now holding a meat cleaver and bringing it down to strike it on the siblings. Quickly, Isabelle pushed Marcus to the side, the chair toppling over as she rolled away and cleared him for safety.

“Well, would you look at that. It seems you’ve found your brother, haven’t you?” The Smiley Face Killer laughed, and then lunged after Isabelle again. She rolled to the side, fumbling to pick up the knife and started trying to saw the ropes binding one of her brother’s legs, while Marcus tried to find a way to untie it. With a clean final swipe, she ripped the rope off, and as she sat up to quickly get the other one her brother screamed at her.

_“Get down, he’s got your gun!”_

Isabelle turned to face the killer, not registering to duck her head, and the man fired her own gun at her. The bullet barely missed someplace fatal, but it did rip an ugly hole through her ear. She screamed and keeled over, holding her ear and she looked up again to find the asshole rising to his feet. She handed her knife to Marcus, told him to get out, and then lunged at the murderer’s legs to bring him back down.

He stumbled down, just as she expected, and Isabelle climbed on top of him, trying her damnedest to rip the gun from his fingertips. She did, but he punched her across the face, her body falling to the side and her vision split into two.

“Come on, sweetheart. Make this easy on me,” he hissed as he started to stand. She rolled over onto her back, unable to move for a moment, her body frozen in place as she watched him pick up the meat cleaver once again and raised it, reading to bring it down, but something smashed against his chest.

The chair broke into pieces as Marcus swung as hard as he could, and while it didn’t knock him down, it toppled him backwards with enough force for him to drop his weapon. Marcus rushed by his sister, helping her sit up so they could get out of there as quick as possible. “Come on, Izzy,” he whispered in a hurry. “Get up.”

But she didn’t. Instead, she let herself be sat up, but she stayed there, aiming her pistol ahead and firing, not caring where she hit – but based on the way he hit the wall and slid to the ground with a growing pool of blood, one of those shots had to have been fatal.

Silence echoed for a moment, before the child took a deep, shaking breath, and turned to her brother. Her mouth was agape, but she couldn’t form words, already afraid of what could have happened if she had shown up any later; tears welled in her eyes.

“Hey, hey, shh—” Marcus didn’t finish, pulling his little sister into his arms and holding her as tightly as she held him as they sobbed. Their bodies clung to each other, afraid that the other would float away if either of them were to loosen, let alone let go. In the distance the two could hear police sirens, but they didn’t move – not yet anyways – as the sound grew louder and voices came in.

Isabelle didn’t want to hear it. Instead, she had turned her head to the side and placed her bleeding ear to her brother’s chest, frantically searching for the sound of his heart.

And it was still beating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope that you guys see the improvement, and hopefully are inspired to keep writing or at the very least I thank you if you're able to help me. Thank you once again for reading and sticking with me throughout my writing and I can't wait to share my next fic with you. :)  
> -Elena


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